


If This Is Goodbye

by imachar



Series: The Weight of a Man [15]
Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Character Death, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Suicidal Thoughts, non-consensual behavior
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-26
Updated: 2013-08-22
Packaged: 2017-12-21 09:31:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 24,432
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/898702
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imachar/pseuds/imachar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The events and aftermath of STID, starting with Chris’s POV and then changing to Phil’s.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Beta: the incomparable **zauzat**...
> 
>  **A/N:** This is the last major part of **[The Weight of a Man](http://imachar.livejournal.com/7467.html)**. It's not necessary to read the other parts before this one, but it will avoid a lot of confusion and add considerable emotional weight to everything that happens if you do. There are at least two more ficlets still to come that are related to this, one of which will serve as the epilogue for the entire series. This will be posted as a series, but it’s all pretty much written, it just needs editing and beta’ing before the rest of it gets posted.
> 
>  **A/N II:** This is the hardest thing I’ve ever written, for obvious reasons. But, as well as dealing with the run up to, and aftermath of, Pike’s death, I’ve also written a few fixes for things that really bothered me in the movie.
> 
>  **A/N: III:** This last installment is slightly AU, because The Secondary Waltz (which I wrote before we knew anything about STID) takes place 22 months after the first reboot movie, I've added a year to the timeline - so in canon this would all take place in 2259, but in my universe it's 2260...
> 
>  **A/N IV:** I'm posting it in chapters, but it's mostly written, just needs beta'ing and editing...so I'll be updating pretty regularly between now and next weekend.

Chris Pike loves real books, the feel of the binding under his hands, the smell of paper, and the slight whisper of sound as he turns the pages. He understands perfectly well why they’re impractical; bulky and fragile and heavier than a PADD, but one of the things he really loves about being freed from the draconian weight restrictions on personal belongings that come with starship life is the luxury of having books around the place. Lots of books.

This evening he’s stretched out in a chair by the floor to ceiling windows of his living room, the dog asleep on the floor at his side, and he’s reading The Hinge of Fate, the fourth volume of Churchill’s great World War II sextet. Waiting for Phil to get home before he thinks about dinner he’s been reading for a couple of hours and it’s well into the evening by the time he reaches the chapter on the Arctic convoys. Riveted, as always, by naval history he’s engrossed in the story of the terrible fate of convoy P.Q.17. Out of reach of air support and at the mercy of U-boats and German aircraft from northern Norway once destroyer cover was withdrawn, twenty-three of its thirty-four ships had been lost in the early days of July 1942; the crews left to suffer and die in the ice-laden waters around Spitsbergen and Nova Zembla.

_In view of the disaster to P.Q.17 the Admiralty proposed to suspend the Arctic convoys at least until the Northern ice-packs melted and receded and until perpetual daylight had passed. I felt this would be a very grave decision, and was inclined not to lower but on the contrary to raise the stakes, on the principle of “In defeat, defiance.”_

His mouth quirks up in a wry smile at that last audacious sentence, Starfleet could use a little of that intrepid spirit right now. In the wake of the Narada disaster and in the face of a panicked civilian population the Federation has spent the last two years wavering between jingoistic militarism and isolationist terror. Factions in the fleet have backed both sides, with only a few visionary souls like Chris willing to push for the preservation of Starfleet’s original mission; the intellectual aspirations of exploration and discovery, combined with the moral core of humanitarian aid and disaster relief. To change those goals in the face of the unpredictable threats of a capricious universe is to let fear constrain your life and rule your future, at least in Chris’s opinion; not that anyone seems to be listening to _him_.

He’s engrossed enough that he doesn’t hear the faint swish of the front door opening and it’s only when Jericho stirs and scrambles to his feet, claws scrabbling on the hardwood floor, that Chris looks up and smiles at the sight of Phil toeing off his boots in the entry hall, one hand on the wall for balance as he grips a take-out container tightly in the other.

“You brought me dinner?”

“I brought you phō; as penance for being so late.” Phil sets the container down on the coffee table and shrugs out of his coat, shaking off the fine layer of moisture that it’s accumulated on the three-block walk from the flash-rail station before he hangs it on the coat-stand to dry. He looks a little weary and Chris wonders what fresh crisis had kept him at Medical well past the end of his shift until he remembers that the hospital is in the middle of annual performance reviews and Phil’s probably been looking at self-assessments all day. The thought makes him wince in sympathy as he remembers his least favorite part of commanding a ship’s complement of 650. Laying his book aside he pushes himself to his feet and, ignoring his cane, limps to the couch, leaning on the back of it and smiling at Phil as he holds out a hand.

“No, you brought me phō because you love me.”

“Well, there is that too.” Divested of his burden Phil reaches for the offered hand and Chris reels him into a soft, _mostly_ chaste, kiss.

They don’t bother with setting the table, content instead to stretch out on the couch, bare feet on the coffee table and bowls of steaming, fragrant broth balanced on their laps. There’s silence for a long space as they garnish their soup with cilantro and bean sprouts, lime and chilies – and extra sriracha for Chris – before applying their very different individual tactics for consuming a large bowl of broth and noodles.

Chris grins as Phil goes for the tidy, conformist soup-spoon-and-chopsticks approach while he just raises the bowl to his mouth and sucks down soup and noodles in long, satisfying mouthfuls, managing for the most part to avoid dripping on his chin. It’s neither the tidiest nor the quietest way to eat phō and after a few minutes of rather graceless slurping Phil raises an eyebrow and states, definitively.

“I know your mother raised you better than that.”

Chris can feel a rivulet of warm broth tracking over his jaw and down his throat and he lays his almost empty bowl aside, laughing at Phil’s slightly outraged face.

“Just because you’re being boring. It tastes _so_ good like this.” He wipes his face with a napkin and picks up the bowl again to finish the soup in a couple of long draughts, savoring the little fragments of garlic and ginger and chili pepper at the bottom of the bowl. He’s just laid it aside to shed the sweatshirt that’s become superfluous now that he’s full of hot broth and chili peppers, when Phil changes the subject.

“Good day?”

“Hmmm, nothing very interesting, spent most of it reading reports from the Redmayne and the Derry on a couple of uninhabited systems out by the Hromi Cluster; and I skimmed Jim’s log entry on the Nibiru mission when it hit my desk. You?”

“No one died, at least no one I was responsible for, that’s always a good day.” Phil sighs, his head dropping onto the back of the couch and Chris notes the slightly weary tension in the long frame as Phil stretches his back, his fingers linked together and coming to rest on top of his head. “Could have done without the four hours of reviewing personnel files, but at least that’s done. I start shift oversight tomorrow.”

Chris sighs, shift oversight means that Phil’s going to be pulling double shifts for at least a week, but he curbs his inclination to complain about it and just taps his foot lightly against Phil’s ankle.

“You got paperwork tonight?”

“Yep, still need to review the notes from yesterday’s M and M meeting. You’re done?”

“For now yeah, I don’t have access to Spock’s science report from the Nibiru mission until SI signs off on it.” He pauses to stretch and roll his neck, working out the kinks from a day at his desk. “I don’t know why they’ve held it up, Jim’s report suggested the whole thing was a complete non-event.”

“Who knows what’s going on with those fuckers.” Phil’s antipathy towards SI is long-standing and deeply ingrained and Chris gives a half-hearted shrug.

“Well, if it’s not in my document queue in the morning I’ll give them a gentle reminder that there’s a 24 hour rule for mission reports to hit my desk.”

“Yeah, like that’ll make a difference.” Phil stands and picks the bowls and silverware off the coffee table, “You want anything from the kitchen?”

Chris knows better than to ask for a beer, as much as he might like one right now the mini-stroke that he suffered a month before and that has caused the irritating weakness in his right leg has also resulted in a whole new batch of medications that don’t mix well with alcohol. It’s frustrating, given how well he’d finally managed to recover from the injuries inflicted by Nero, but he’s acutely aware that his recovery will be all the faster if he just behaves himself for a little longer.

“Just mineral water and a little…” he bestows his most engaging smile on Phil and makes a small square with his fingers, “…dark chocolate.”

“Good boy.” Phil smiles back and runs a hand through Chris’s hair, ruffling the slightly-too-long strands with a grunt of approval. “Hmm…feels nice.”

“Make the most of it, it’s getting trimmed in the morning.” Chris leans back, looking up at Phil with another smile. He knows how much Phil loves his hair when it gets a little long and unruly, a few stray curls appearing on his forehead and around his ears and nape and he’d keep it longer all the time if only those curls weren’t so damn wayward when he’s in dress grays. But for now he just leans into Phil’s hand and hums at the feel of strong fingers on his scalp. “Hmmm…I could let you do that all night.”

Phil chuffs a soft laugh and withdraws his hand with a last gentle sweep of fingers across Chris’s temples. “Sorry, sweetheart. Paperwork, remember.”

“Hmmhhmm…yeah.” Chris levers himself off the couch as Phil takes the dishes into the kitchen and slowly makes his way to the adjacent study, returning moments later with his guitar. He hesitates in the doorway for a moment and tilts his head as Phil returns from the kitchen and settles onto the couch with a couple of PADDs.

“You want music while you work? I could use some practice.”

He gets a pleased grin at the offer, “That’d be great.” There’s a wealth of affection in Phil’s eyes as he stretches up and Chris leans down to meet him in a brief kiss.

A little over four weeks out from the stroke – the _very_ minor stroke as he keeps pointing out to Phil – the guitar is good for improving Chris’s manual dexterity and he’s been playing a lot more than usual, filling their late evenings with the varied sounds of blues and folk and even a little improvised late 22nd century classical, nothing terribly complicated, just the easy, relaxed sounds that Chris can draw from an instrument that’s almost two and a half centuries old.

Most of the time he can play without focusing too closely on what he’s doing and Chris lets his attention wander, watching as Phil flips through documents on the PADD on his knee and makes notes on the one sitting on the couch cushion at his side. His concentration is impressive, even though he manages to lift his head every so often to smile at Chris, and cast an assessing gaze on the fingers of his right hand as they work across the strings. He’s obviously trying to be discreet and Chris has to fight the urge to grin every time that experienced physician’s regard passes across his body, but eventually the urge to comment becomes too great to resist.

“I’m fine, you know.” Chris stops playing an actual melody and just picks at the strings for a while, idle, random chords and scale progressions, his fingers moving of their own accord as he stares across at Phil who lays his PADD aside and scrubs his hands across his face.

“I know, I know. But that doesn’t stop me from worrying.” He looks up, his eyes a vivid blue in the subdued light. “I don’t care how minor the stroke was, there was no warning and if it happened again, and I wasn’t here this time. Jesus, Chris…” his voice trails away and Chris is suddenly very conscious of just how hard the last few years have been for Phil; of how much worry and fear and uncertainty he’s had to live with.

Slowly and with a fair amount of effort he stands and lays the guitar in the spare stand that sits beside the fireplace. “Come on, let’s go to bed. It’s late and I want to fall asleep with you next to me.”

As he reaches the couch he stretches out a hand and twines their fingers together, squeezing gently and Phil tilts his head. “Just give me a minute, okay?”

“Sure, I need to take Jericho out again, I’ll see you in a few.”

Phil frowns briefly, but before Chris can tell him to cut it out his face clears and he nods in assent. “Okay, but put your hoodie back on, it’s chilly out there.”

****

It takes fifteen minutes to walk the dog and by the time he gets back Phil has cleared the bathroom and, t-shirt clad, is already stretched out under the pale green cotton sheets.

It’s late February and the cloud is hanging low over San Francisco, obscuring the night sky and throwing back the ambient glow of light from a million vehicles and apartment windows throughout the city as Chris depolarizes the glass and lets the light filter into the bedroom.

There’s enough illumination for Chris to see Phil propped up on one elbow, watching him with a slight smile and eyes that are fond and amused all at the same time. “You need the light for a floorshow?”

Chris has already shed his pale gray hoodie, and he just grins as he pulls his t-shirt up by the hem, and stretches his arms up until his face is covered in soft, warm cotton and he can hear Phil’s low murmur of appreciation. He spins the moment out, knowing full well that Phil is ogling; enjoying the attention even as he marvels slightly at the thought that his somewhat battered 54-year old body still merits such loving devotion.

And then, with one last wriggle, the t-shirt is off and he throws it over his shoulder towards the laundry hamper. “So long as a floor show is all you want.” He pauses and rubs at a sore spot on the back of his shoulder. “I’m way too tired for anything more interactive.”

Phil pats the space on the bed by his side. “You and me both, come on; tomorrow’s going to be another long and probably very boring day.”

They don’t usually sleep wrapped around each other – Phil’s tendency towards restless sleep and Chris’s occasional night terrors resulting in too many inadvertent bruises over the years – but tonight Chris slides in close, tucking his head beneath Phil’s chin and draping an arm and a leg over the warm, firm body at his side.

“I’m not going any where, you know.” Chris breaks the silence after a few minutes, reassured by the gentle brush of Phil’s fingers on the skin of his back that he hasn’t fallen asleep yet.

“Hmmm….sometimes that isn’t a choice we get. I’m not afraid of you leaving, I’m afraid of you being taken from me.” Phil’s voice is quiet in the dark and Chris shivers as a thumb rubs firmly up his spine and then long fingers slip into the curls at his nape.

“None of us come with guarantees, Phil.” He slides his hand across Phil’s chest, until it comes to rest on his sternum, the cotton t-shirt soft and warm to his touch as he presses his palm to the steady beat of Phil’s heart. “But, I can promise to do my damnedest not to deliberately put myself in harm’s way.”

“I guess that’s all I can ask.” There’s still a shadow in Phil’s voice, and Chris can feel the slight shiver as he’s hugged a little too tight for a moment. Chris tolerates it for a few seconds and then tilts his head and nips gently at the faint stubble on Phil’s jaw. And with a sigh Phil relaxes, almost as if he’s deliberately trying to cast off the sense of dread that has crept over the conversation, loosening his hold and shifting to give Chris access to his mouth.

The kiss is slow and deep, and utterly undemanding, and Chris leans into it, using his mouth and his body to impart reassurance in a way that he could never do with words.

****

Notification that the science report from the Enterprise’s mission to Nibiru is ready for review finally pops up on Chris’s data screen late the following morning. The file is sealed to his personal ID, which is protocol, and accompanied by a terse memo from the office of the Commander in Chief of Starfleet, which is not.

[To: Adm. Christopher Pike, Chief of Starfleet Operations – the information in the appended file _NCC1701scδ2260.48_ is in conflict with file _NCC1701logξ2260.48_. Please review both files pursuant to Starfleet General Order One; Starfleet regulations 69.46/2, 71.4/23, 103.43/6 and 139.65/1.]

By no means does Chris have the Starfleet Regulation code memorized, but like every other captain of longstanding there are a couple of General Orders and regulations that are burned into his memory from frequent repetition. General Order One, the Prime Directive, is one of them and he grits his teeth in frustration at the thought of the Enterprise violating it; but it’s the mention of regulation 71.4/23 that really sets his heart tripping in his chest. All of regulation 71.4 covers violations of mission reporting protocols, and subsection 23 regards the falsification of the Captain’s log. For all that it’s buried in an obscure section of the regs, it’s one of the few really hard and fast rules of captaincy and violating it carries penalties from temporary suspension of command all the way to lifetime incarceration in a Starfleet penal facility.

Admiral Marcus’s hand written note at the bottom of the memo, provides neither clarification nor comfort.

_“Chris, the Enterprise has been recalled to Earth and I’ve called an emergency tribunal, I know it’s protocol for the Chief of Operations to be at a meeting that reviews a problematic mission report, but not this time. Komack is adamant that we should meet without your input since it’s Kirk. I want to see you at 14:00 tomorrow to discuss the outcome of that meeting.”_

His stomach churns on the surfeit of bitter coffee that’s all he’s had since breakfast, and he has to pause for a deep breath, reaching into the shallow drawer under his desk for the slim container that holds his various medications. The gel strip melts under his tongue, custom designed for his very particular reactions to stress it simultaneously calms his stomach and his blood pressure and then, when he can no longer feel his pulse beating in his head and he’s sure he’s not going to have another stroke – or vomit – he opens the file and begins to read.

When he’s done he leans forward and covers his face with one hand, thumb and middle finger pressing hard on each temple as he tries to stave off the monumental headache that has started to creep up from the wire-taut muscles across his shoulders, and then allows himself a momentary loss of control to release some of the tension.

“Fuck, fuck, _fuck_ , fuck, fuck. Jesus-fucking- _Christ_ Jim, what were you thinking.”

He pulls up Jim’s log entry on his second screen and reads both files through twice, scribbling notes onto his desk tablet, feeling vaguely nauseated as he realizes just how egregiously the Enterprise bridge crew has violated the Prime Directive. Interfering in the development of any sentient life forms that haven’t yet achieved warp capability is prohibited for very, very good reasons, and while Chris – whose grasp of Starfleet history is unmatched by anyone else in the fleet – can cite the incidents that led to the creation of General Order One chapter and verse, he’s also aware that there is an entire eight week unit on the history of the Prime Directive in the Ethics and Principles of Command class.

A class that Chris knows Jim Kirk aced.

A class that Commander Spock fucking _taught_ in the year between Admiral D’Jong’s retirement and the Academy managing to find a replacement from the office of the JAG.

“Fuck.” Now he’s as angry with Spock as he is with Jim, and he’s not thrilled with McCoy either, who had been assigned to the Enterprise on Phil’s recommendation as the adult voice of reason. This is a clusterfuck of the highest caliber and as much as he still believes that Jim Kirk has the potential to be the best captain in the fleet, he’s not sure he can mitigate this disaster; he’s not even sure he wants to.

Tired and still very, very pissed off, he decides to delay making any formal commentary on the files until he’s had a chance to calm down and think through all the possible ways that this catastrophe could potentially be alleviated. Glancing up at the vid-feeds scrolling across the right hand wall of his office, his eye is caught by the time – a little after 12:30 – just as his stomach reminds him that it’s needing attention. He brings up Phil’s comm number and texts:

[Are you free for lunch?]

The reply is virtually instantaneous.

[Sure. 13:00 at Cannaregio? Bad day?]

And Chris smiles for the first time in at least an hour, obviously Phil is bored.

[As bad as it gets. See you in thirty]

 

Part 2 tomorrow....

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chris gets offered the Enterprise and then has to go home and discuss it with Phil, it doesn't go well....

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See notes at the beginning of chapter 1

****

“So talk to me about it.” Phil has managed to snag one of Cannaregio’s coveted window tables, and he’s nibbling absently on grissini as Chris slides into his seat and pours himself a glass of water.

“It’s a fucking nightmare.” He sighs and looks across at Phil, who is looking back at him; calm, patient and quietly supportive and, even though some of this is technically above Phil’s clearance level, Chris launches into a detailed and expletive-laced account of the morning’s disaster. 

Almost finished with his spaghetti alle vongole by the time Chris is all the way through the story Phil waves a hand in the general direction of Chris’s plate encouraging him to eat. “Your mussels are getting cold, finish your lunch while I think about this for a little bit.”

Chris applies himself to his food for a few minutes, trying to shed his anger long enough to actually appreciate the perfectly steamed mussels in their spicy, pungent garlic and wine broth; sucking the last piece of flesh off the last shell just as Phil snaps a grissini in half and uses it to punctuate his observations. 

“I can’t imagine you’re really mad about the Prime Directive angle.” 

Chris goes to protest that the double infraction of not only interfering, but being seen to do so means that he is indeed pissed about the violation of the Prime Directive, but Phil shuts him down with a look and a word. “Tegarus”

Reminded of one of his own creative interpretations of the Prime Directive and a mission that had almost cost him his command, Chris winces. “Okay, you win, I could probably find a way to mitigate the Prime Directive issue.”

“So it’s the falsification of the log?”

“And the hubris behind it. He _lied_ in his log and he thought he could get away with it. Well…” and Chris pauses, pinching the bridge of his nose as he winces again, this time in pain. Taking a slow breath he starts in surprise when his free hand is lifted from the table and then groans quietly as Phil applies a hard pressure to the webbing between his thumb and forefinger, massaging the spot firmly as Chris relaxes a fraction and continues, “…they were lies of omission rather than commission, but I suspect the tribunal is going to dismiss that as a technicality.”

“Presumably it didn’t occur to him that Spock was going to submit a science report.” Phil continues to rub the pressure point on his hand as Chris shakes his head in frustration. 

“And that’s the other problem. How could he be so totally fucking clueless about the way his XO operates. Seriously, they are a command team, if they can’t trust each other, if they can’t communicate, then they’re going to get themselves, and everyone else on that ship killed.” Chris takes out his frustration on the remains of his lunch, tamping a thick slice of crusty garlic bread into the sauce that’s pooled in the bottom of the bowl.

“Spock has to take most of the responsibility for that Chris, we all know he’s the experienced one. We had him for two years on the Yorktown, he’s seen the way a captain and XO should function.” 

“I know, I know, believe me, I’m pissed at him too, but ultimately this clusterfuck is Jim’s responsibility, he’s the captain. He’s the one I’m going to have to bail out.“

“But you _are_ going to try to get him out of this?” Phil picks up the last lonely breadstick and rolls it between his index and middle fingers before snapping off the end and popping it in his mouth. 

“What the fuck do you think?” There’s irritation in Chris’s tone and he tries to rein it in – none of this is Phil’s fault – taking a breath as he pauses and looking out at the view; the mega-talls of Starfleet HQ and the financial district to the north and west, with fleeting glimpses of Alcatraz and Angel Island in the gaps between the buildings. 

The grip on his hand gentles and he looks back across the table, irritation fading as Phil lifts his hand and kisses the palm gently, his grin tolerant and fond. 

“I think you’re a good man, and I think you’ll move heaven and earth to clean up Jim’s mess.” The grin expands a little and the corner of Phil’s mouth quirks up in the way that Chris loves. “And then you’ll kick his ass all the way from here to Fort Point in the hope that he doesn’t do it again.” 

****

A little more than twenty-four hours later Chris finds himself sliding into a chair in the office of Starfleet’s Commander-in-Chief and, as he leans his cane up against the side of the chair, Alex Marcus lifts an eyebrow, his voice desert dry as he asks, “You keeping that to hand just in case you don’t like what we did to your protégé?”

As serious as the situation is, Chris barks a quiet laugh. He’s known Marcus for over forty years and while they haven’t always seen eye-to-eye on Federation politics or the direction Starfleet should take in the wake of successive incursions by hostile parties, he likes to think they’ve been friends through it all. They’d first met when Lieutenant Marcus had served under Chris’s father on the USS Hadley and he knows Marcus likes to tell people that he’s the reason a teenaged Chris had decided to join Starfleet. It’s bullshit, Chris had never not been destined for deep-space service, but he tolerates the affectation, it’s never a bad thing to be on good terms with the Commander-in-Chief. 

Good enough terms that his only response is a get-on-with-it gesture and Marcus shakes his head, his smile wry and regretful. 

“Okay…well… the tribunal decided to remove Kirk from command of the Enterprise.”

Chris isn’t surprised at that decision, he’s not even sure if he would have argued against it if he’d been in the room, but he will be surprised if that’s going to be Jim’s only punishment. “And what else?”

Marcus waves a hand absently at him. “Later, right now I have a question for you.” He pauses for a moment and Chris frowns, he had thought he was here to discuss Jim and the tribunal, he has no idea what else Marcus could want from him and he’s utterly unprepared for Marcus’s next question. 

“You want her back?”

There’s a long beat of silence as Chris wraps his head around just what Marcus is asking, and then, as he realizes what he’s being offered, his heart stutters in his chest as he asks, his voice charged with disbelief, “The Enterprise?”

“The Enterprise. You want her, she’s yours.”

“You’re not serious?” It’s a stupid question because of course Marcus is serious, it’s not the kind of offer he would make in jest, but Chris needs a moment of breathing space for his heart-rate to settle down.

“You need to think about it?” There’s a note of surprise in Marcus’s voice and he gives Chris a skeptical frown.

“No, of course not, but I can’t make a decision like this without talking it through with Phil.” Even as he says the words his excitement falters a fraction, he’s under no illusions about what Phil’s going to think about him going back out in the black again, and as he hesitates Marcus shrugs. 

“Understood, bear in mind though, we’ll reinstate him as your CMO.”

“Yeah, I’m not sure how he’s going to feel about that.” Actually, Chris is pretty sure he _does_ know how Phil’s going to feel about it. Even before Nero irrevocably changed all their futures Phil hadn’t been massively enthusiastic about another long deep space tour, and it had taken a fair amount of persuasion to get him to agree to sign on as CMO on what would have been Chris’s Enterprise. Now, two years on, settled at Starfleet Medical, settled in a real home, with a life built around an assumption that they will be Earth-bound and together for the foreseeable future, Chris can’t imagine that Phil’s going to be thrilled at the thought of uprooting all that for the sake of a five-year deep space assignment. 

Still, that’s a problem for later, his immediate concern right now is Jim. “If I agree, I’m going to want to talk to you about Kirk.”

“We’re sending him back to the Academy.” There’s an implacable set to Marcus’s face, a warning in his voice that this is not a topic that is open for discussion. 

Even though he should know better, Chris refuses to be intimidated into dropping the subject and presses on. “Yeah? I don’t see that working out well, do you?” He has a hard time keeping his tone even; sending Jim back to the Academy is about the stupidest thing he can imagine. Punishing him in a way that is both vindictive and cruel and unlikely to serve any larger purpose. Jim isn’t going to learn anything new there, what he needs is in-service time in the black, with a good captain at his back and a sense that everyone makes mistakes and, if no-one dies, then they are rarely irredeemable.

“You have an alternative plan? Because I can’t see anyone being willing to take him on as part of their command team.”

“Yeah, well, you shouldn't have promoted him so fast in the first place. We talked about this Alex, it was always going to end badly.” He taps a finger against his lips, weighing whether he wants to show his cards now or wait until he’s had a chance to talk to Phil about going back out on the Enterprise. 

Marcus frowns and waves his hand impatiently, “Out with it, Chris. What have you got in mind?” 

“Let me take him as my XO.” It’s a risk. Chris is aware of just how badly this could turn out for him if Jim’s inexperience results in some catastrophe for his crew or his ship. But dammit, he sincerely believes that Jim Kirk has the potential to be the best captain in the fleet and he’s not going to let an excessive devotion to protocol get in the way of all that raw talent, not if he can help it. 

“I’m not sure that’s a good idea, for you or him.” Marcus hesitates and then continues. “I want to shake up the whole command team.” 

“Shake it up all you like, but I think Kirk deserves the chance to learn how to be a captain in the black, not in some fucking classroom.” He can see the moment of hesitation in Marcus as he shifts in his seat and Chris presses his advantage. “Come on Alex, you’ve seen the scores he posted in every class that mattered at the Academy. He might behave like a reckless delinquent most of the time, but his intellect and his intuition are off the fucking charts. All he needs is discipline and direction. Give him to me for a couple of years and I guarantee you, I’ll make him the best captain in the fucking fleet.”

With a frown at Chris’s language, just enough to remind him that he’s in an official meeting, Marcus leans back in his chair and rests his chin on steepled fingertips. “I don’t know.” 

Never the most patient of men, it takes a real effort of will for Chris not to interject as Marcus mulls over his proposal. One thumb rubbing absently at his chin, the admiral frowns briefly, blue eyes narrowed in thought before he finally takes a breath. “Let me think about it. If you decide to take the Enterprise then we can talk about that as an alternative tomorrow. But I’m not guaranteeing anything. The board was pretty pissed about the falsified log entry.”

Relieved that Marcus will at least think about reassessing Jim’s penalty, Chris pushes his luck a little further. He’d spent part of the morning reexamining the Enterprise’s mission logs since their last R&R stop, looking for any discrepancies that might help to explain Jim’s behavior. 

“Yeah, about that. You know, I checked back through Jim’s log entries for the past few weeks and there’s a very strange gap on 2260.42. They were supposed to go in and do an update survey on Phaedus.” Chris deliberately keeps his tone neutral, but he can see the sudden tension in Marcus’s frame as he sits up a little straighter in his chair, and he knows he’s on to something. Twenty years before when Marcus had been XO on the previous incarnation of the USS Enterprise his captain, the much-loved and sadly lamented Bob April, had gone missing on Phaedus, and there had always been something a little fishy about that particular disappearance. But Chris doesn’t need to spell it out, it’s clear that Marcus has figured out exactly where this is going.

“And then suddenly there’s no mention of Phaedus, just the report of an encounter with a gunrunner called Harry Mudd and the Enterprise ends up with a cache of weapons and a confiscated K’normian blockade runner. You wouldn’t know anything about that would you?”

He’s taking a risk, hinting that he’s suspicious about a mission that had ended up being retroactively classified far above his clearance level, but he’s known Alex Marcus long enough to be pretty sure he can get away with it. While mission reports are easy to redact after the fact, altering ships’ logs to conceal classified content is more problematic, and Chris suspects that whatever happened on Phaedus resulted in Jim being ordered to create one, if not several, false log entries, to replace the original entries which were then classified and removed from the mission record that was sent to the Office of the Chief of Operations. While that isn’t quite the same as choosing to falsify the log to cover up a violation of the Prime Directive, it’s not exactly something the upper levels of command would want to become common knowledge, and it would certainly explain Jim’s relatively cavalier attitude towards the sanctity of ships’ logs and mission reports. 

There’s a cold resolve in Marcus’s voice as he slowly frames his reply, a warning that Chris is treading on dangerous ground. “What I do or do not know about the Phaedus mission is classified, which is why you got such a severely redacted report in the first place.” He punctuates his next point with a cautionary finger. “Chris, don’t push your luck on this, whatever happened on Phaedus has nothing to do with Kirk’s decision to ignore the Prime Directive on Nibiru and implicate his entire command crew in a level 1 infraction.”

“You’re not disciplining all of them, surely?” Technically every bridge officer who was on duty and didn’t log a formal objection to Jim’s plan to shut down the volcanic eruption on Nibiru is incriminated in the violation of General Order One, but it’s almost unheard of for anyone other than the captain and any senior officers directly involved in the infraction to be punished. 

“No but regardless of whether you take the Enterprise or not I’m splitting them up. Abbot needs an XO on the Bradbury now that we’ve given Naifeh the Lenin, and that would be a good fit for Spock. We’ll leave you – if you decide to go back to the Enterprise – with Scott, who seemed to be the only voice of reason in this whole debacle and the all the junior bridge officers. I assume you’d also want McCoy reassigned.”

Chris raises a hand to cut Marcus off. “Hold on, I haven’t said yes yet. And if I do and Phil signs on, which is far from a foregone conclusion, then I’m going to want to give McCoy the choice of whether he stays on the Enterprise and serves as Phil’s second for a while, or goes somewhere else.” 

“Okay, okay, I can give you until 11:00 tomorrow. Then I need a decision.” Marcus stands indicating that he’s about to dismiss Chris and then holds up a finger as Chris pushes himself to his feet with the aid of his cane. “Keep this quiet, Kirk won’t officially be relieved of command until sometime tomorrow. The brass know we’re offering you the Enterprise and obviously you can talk to Phil about it, but other than that keep a lid on it until tomorrow.”

****

In retrospect Chris should probably have tried harder to get in touch with Phil in the hours after he leaves Marcus’s office. The prospect of possibly having a second chance at the Enterprise has left him tense and exhilarated, his chest tight with anticipation, but he’s acutely aware that Phil is probably not going to be nearly as thrilled with the idea. When he tries to comm and gets Phil’s standard “I’m in surgery, leave a message” response he hesitates, unsure what to say, and signs off without leaving a voice message or a text. 

Too wound up to go back to the office, and still curious about Marcus’s defensiveness over Phaedus, he spends the rest of the afternoon using his considerable skills at navigating data archives, to find everything he can on the Phaedus mission of 2239; and any subsequent reports of suspicious activity in the region. When he’s done there are still some gaps in the narrative, but he’s constructed what he thinks could be a plausible scenario to explain the heavily redacted mission report – and Jim’s bizarrely brief log entry – from the Enterprise’s recent visit to Phaedus. He has absolutely no solid evidence, certainly nothing other than a gut feeling, to tie Marcus to whatever is going on, but still he sends a single line text message. 

[RIDA2239?] 

It’s cryptic enough that the SI techs going through the daily comm traffic are going to miss the significance of the initials and numbers – there are very few people still in the fleet who know that Bob April’s full name was Robert Ioan Davenport April – but Marcus will be left in no doubt that Chris has figured out that Bob might not be dead, might indeed, still be on Phaedus, and that Commander Alex Marcus had falsified a log entry of his own, way back in 2239, when he’d declared his captain missing in action. 

He gets a response almost immediately.

[Leave it alone, Chris – you’ve made your point]

He’s sitting on one of the benches outside the north tower of Starfleet HQ, enjoying the view out over Fisherman’s Wharf to Alcatraz as the sun sets off to the west, and he allows himself a small smile at his victory; pretty sure now that Marcus will fight to get Jim assigned as his XO. Then the smile fades as he realizes he’s already assuming that he’ll need an XO, he’s making an emotional investment in a command that he hasn’t even accepted yet; a command that might cost him more than he’s willing to pay. It’s time to go home and talk to Phil.

Except Phil isn’t home. 

Chris makes it through the front door of the apartment just before 19:00 only to remember that Phil is working a double shift. Trying to efficiently oversee as many trauma teams as possible, he’d started the day with the second half of gamma shift, worked his own alpha shift and is now overseeing the first four hours of beta shift, and he won’t be home for at least another hour. 

Tense and frustrated Chris leaves the apartment once more and sets off in the damp evening fog to walk Jericho. Intending only to be out for fifteen or twenty minutes he wanders down to the marina and then finds himself walking the trail out towards Horseshoe Bay. This has always been one of his favorite running routes and he could typically cover the 10k trail leading out to The Needles and back to town in a little over 40 minutes; but the stroke has deprived him of hard physical exertion as a tension release and his frustration spikes for a moment as he leans on his cane and looks out over Richardson Bay, the lights dim in the faint drizzle. He stands there for a long time, breathing in a slow, deep rhythm while he tries not to fixate on the thought of taking command of the Enterprise again. He knows that Phil’s going to need a lot of persuasion not just to go himself but probably also – given the current state of his health – to let Chris take on the physical and mental stress of commanding the fleet’s flagship. And if he thinks about it too much, if he lets himself get too enthused about the prospect of taking up that center seat, he’s liable to lose any inclination to compromise and if he walks into this next very necessary conversation with Phil with his heart set on the Enterprise from the start the resulting fight could be very ugly. 

Chris knows that it was never a conversation that was going to go well, but it really doesn’t help that Phil makes it home first, and when he does finally appear at a little after 20:00 Chris is cold and limping from being out in the fog for far too long. 

Phil’s in the kitchen reheating some left over chicken and pasta and he frowns as Chris comes in to hang up the dog leash on the back of the door. He reaches out to wrap his fingers around Chris’s wrist in passing and the hisses in annoyance. “What the fuck, Chris. You’re freezing.” 

“Yeah, sorry, got distracted while I was out, walked further than I thought.” Chris takes his arm back and thumbs the switch on the coffee maker, making sure it’s set for decaf. “I’ll be fine, just let me warm up.”

Phil shakes his head, his irritation obvious, and Chris tilts his head. “What?”

There’s a long pause before Phil sighs, the deep, slightly melancholy sound of someone contemplating exactly how to start a conversation he’d rather not have at all before he finally declares, “I had an interesting comm from Ruchi this afternoon.”

So much for keeping the news quiet; it doesn't entirely surprise Chris that the rumor of his possible return to the Enterprise made it as far as the Surgeon General’s office in only a few hours. Branch-Admiral Victoria Turnbull has spies among the administrative staff of every branch of the service. It surprises him even less that the SG’s chief of staff, one of Phil’s oldest friends, had taken it upon herself to pass the information along to Phil – but Jesus he wishes she hadn’t. “Okay, can I assume that you heard something about my meeting with Alex?”

“When were you planning to tell me?” Phil’s tone isn’t quite hostile, but it’s not neutral either and, still on edge, nervous tension and anticipation elevating his adrenaline just enough to fray his nerves and sharpen his tongue, Chris goes on the defensive. “I only just found out myself.”

“Bullshit, your meeting with Alex was over by 15:00 and there was plenty of time for the news to reach me half way across the city. You could have commed me.” It’s clear that Phil’s been thinking about this all afternoon, and Chris has the feeling that he’s already come up with a nice, neat list of objections to either of them taking on the Enterprise again. 

Even as he's making it Chris recognizes his attempt to lower the tension as probably futile and he keeps his voice level as he explains. “You were in surgery when I got out of Alex’s office, there was no point in trying to comm you and then yeah, I got distracted.” He throws up a hand, reaching out in a plea for understanding, “I didn’t want to tell you like that. It’s not a done deal. I wanted to talk to you about it first.” 

Phil leans back against the counter, his dinner abandoned, and his voice is deceptively calm as he counters in a sarcasm-laden drawl, “Well, that’s fucking considerate of you. Are we really going to have a conversation or are you just going to try to convince me of all the reasons I should let you do this to us, and be happy to go along with you?”

A fight is inevitable now, and Chris knows it even as he takes up a position leaning on the counter opposite Phil. As much as he understands that Phil’s anger is born more of fear than genuine ire at the possibility of deep space service becoming a part of their future plans, his own anger flares at the provocation and at Phil’s obvious unwillingness to acknowledge that he’s trying to be reasonable. “That’s not fair, I told Alex I had to talk to you before I made any kind of decision.”

“You really think there’s a discussion to be made here? Chris, you just had a fucking stroke.”

“A minor one, you said it yourself, and Javatred cleared me for unrestricted duty last week.” Angrier than he should be, the pain from the chill and too long a walk forcing him to lean heavily on the counter, Chris snaps back and tries to ignore the ache in his right leg. 

For a moment Phil looks stricken, as if he realizes that they’ve already gone too far and he changes tack, losing a little of the aggression as he pleads, “Yeah, and the PTSD?” 

“It’s under control, fuck I haven’t had a flash-back in over a year.” It’s not entirely true, he’s had a considerable setback in the last two months and even his therapist doesn’t know the full extent of his renewed night terrors. 

Phil, on the other hand, is very familiar with them. “Yeah, until you spent that day on the Enterprise two months ago. What has that done to your last couple of psych evaluations?”

“They’re fine, you really think command would offer me the flagship if they didn’t think I was fit for duty.”

“I could change that.” Phil’s always at his most dangerous when he’s quiet like this, the anger reined in and channeled into a cold, hard resolve. And now they are treading a very dangerous line, so close to referencing their departure from the Yorktown, their personal version of unleashing a tactical nuclear strike in any fight. 

“Don’t you fucking dare; I swear Phil, you pull that shit again...” 

Chris gets close, but it’s Phil that actually says the word. “Again? Like what? Like the Yorktown?”

“You had me declared medically unfit.” It’s been almost seven years and Chris is surprised at the renewed sense of betrayal that wells up to fuel his rage. It had taken him a long time to forgive Phil for using the intimate knowledge of Chris’s physical and mental state that he was privy to as a partner as well as a physician when he ran the semi-annual psych/phys report that had resulted in Chris being grounded and losing command of the Yorktown. It had taken even longer for Phil to forgive Chris for holding him responsible for that decision by command and by the time Chris had finally acknowledged that Phil had acted both professionally and out of concern for Chris’s health they’d almost destroyed a ten-year relationship. 

“You were fucking medically unfit. Jesus, Chris you came within a heartbeat of a major cardiac event.” Phil takes a breath and then stands, pushing himself away from the counter and pacing in front of the window. “This; this is why we can’t do this again. I will not serve as your CMO. You want to go out there, you go without me.”

It’s clear that they are way beyond any possibility of a rational discussion at this point and Chris lets his tongue loose, snapping back the first spiteful thing that comes into his head. 

“Fine, that’ll save me having to explain to Jim why I’ve had his husband reassigned.”

For a moment Phil looks like he’s been slapped, and Chris feels his stomach twist at the sudden flash of injured fury in Phil’s face as he counters. “Well, god-fucking-forbid we should inconvenience your fucking protégé.” 

“I mean it you know; I’ll go out there without you if you don’t sign on.” For a moment Chris wonders how this conversation managed to get so ugly so fast, but then they’ve always had a particular talent for this kind of mutual destruction. 

“I don’t doubt that for an instant; you’ve always been clear where your priorities lie when there’s a ship on the line.”

Chris takes a breath at the vicious bitterness in Phil’s tone, appalled at how rapidly the argument has degenerated. They’re both sharp-tongued and quick-witted and Chris had forgotten how nasty things could get when they turned all that intelligence and invective on each other. It’s getting out of hand, they’re saying things they don’t really mean, using old wounds to score points and Chris can see the pain in Phil’s face even as they continue to sling accusations and insults at each other. They rarely fight like this anymore and, just as in the past, these all out verbal assaults only happen when there’s a ship to come between them. 

“Fuck you, that’s not true.”

“Isn’t it? We made a promise, Chris. When we got married, we made a promise that we were more important than our careers…or did that only apply as long as you weren’t fit for the center seat?”

Chris draws another deep breath and lets it out slowly. At some level he knows Phil is right, two years before, in the aftermath of the Narada, they’d finally agreed that what they had together was worth more than any ship, any posting, any career advancement that Starfleet could offer, and they had married on the strength of that agreement. But it had never occurred to him that Phil wouldn’t even discuss the possibility of going back into the black, and he needs time to think this through, to see if he can come to terms with the idea of giving up the Enterprise a second time and for that he needs some space. 

“Enough, we’ve said enough.” When it looks like Phil is about to pick up the thread of the fight again Chris holds up his hand. “I said I’ve had enough, we can come back to this when we’ve both calmed down.” He takes another slow breath and pushes himself to his feet, tapping his thigh to summon the dog. “I’m going out for a while.” 

It hurts, walking out when they’re fighting and, even after almost seventeen years together, there’s a small part of Chris that is nervous that one day he’ll walk out and come home to find that Phil has finally had enough and left for good. But as angry as they are right now, proximity will only increase the risk of the tension escalating and he’s not going to risk staying until one of them says something unforgivable. 

It’s wet out on the pavement in front of the apartment block, the rain falling heavily now through the mid-winter fog, and Chris hesitates for a moment. He had planned to walk Jericho down to one of the marina-side restaurants until he calmed down, but the rain has put paid to any thought of sitting on an outside patio with the dog. 

“Come on then boy, let’s go see Mom and Dad.”

It takes a little over half an hour to ride the flash rail to the main hub at Union Square and then change lines and ride the Academy Loop out to Baker Beach South and it’s almost 21:00 when he finally fetches up at his parents’ front door. Alice opens it within seconds of Chris pressing his hand to the entry sensor, almost as if she’d been expecting company and Chris looks at her, sheepish and a little chagrined as she shakes her head at him. 

“Why did I get the feeling I’d be seeing you tonight.” She steps aside to let him enter and the door closes with a quiet click behind him. 

“You heard already?”

“Of course I heard, your father commed me a few hours ago to say that you’d been offered her again.”

“Where is he?”

“Paris, he’s due back in the morning.”

Chris pulls off his sweatshirt and hangs it over the banister to dry. He’s not really surprised that the news has traveled so fast, although it’s more than a little disconcerting that Alice knows him – and Phil – so well as to have deduced that they’d already be fighting about it. 

“Did you walk out or did he throw you out?”

“I walked out, it was getting ugly.”

She shakes her head again and pats him on the back. “Come on, let’s have some tea and you can tell me about it.”

The kitchen is warm and familiar, the senior Pikes have been living in this house on Piper Loop for over twenty years and it’s almost as much a home to Chris as the Mojave ranch house where he grew up. He finds a couple of dog treats in a cookie jar on the counter and tosses one to Jericho and the other to his mother’s retriever/bernese mix Shasta, watching as the dogs settle down together, sharing the huge dog bed under the farmhouse table. 

Taking a seat on one of the stools at the kitchen island, Chris rests his chin on his fists and waits patiently as Alice fixes him tea. She adds a generous spoonful of honey along with a couple of slices of raw ginger and a splash of lemon before sliding the mug across the counter. 

“That’ll stave off any chance of a chill.” She doctors her own mug with milk and sugar and then settles onto a stool on the opposite side of the island. “Now, tell me what happened.”

One of the things Chris can always rely on with Alice is that she’ll let him know when he’s letting his ego and his ambition – and his love of deep space – rule his good sense. But she doesn't intervene until Chris is done, and then she shakes her head as if she’s dealing with a stubborn, backward child.

“He’s scared, Chris.” She reaches out and rubs her hand gently across his knuckles; “We’ve nearly lost you twice in the last few years.”

“I know, I guess it’s hard for me to see how much that changes things.” Chris pinches the bridge of his nose in a familiar gesture of frustration and confusion. “Two years ago we were on our way back into the black and I know he wasn’t thrilled about it, but he agreed. Now he won’t even consider it.”

“Chris,” Alice’s voice is sharp with affectionate irritation and she emphasizes each word very carefully when she continues, “…you…almost…died…twice.” And she rubs his hand again. “I don’t think you have any idea what that did to him. Just give him a little time, and maybe try to consider what’s really important here.”

It’s not what Chris wants to hear but he recognizes that after almost sixty years of marriage to a Starfleet officer, Alice understands Phil’s perspective far better than he ever will, and he sighs. “Okay. I just….” He realizes he’s being petulant now, but she’s the one person that will tolerate him behaving like a teenager, “…I just fucking loved that ship and I never expected a second chance, it’s going to be hard to say no.”

“I know, sweetheart, I know, but if you love Phil as much as I think you do then this has to be his decision as well as yours.” She fetches the teapot and refills both their mugs. “At least you didn’t tell Alex yes right away, that shows a little restraint on your part.” She pats him on the back, “Stay for a while, give Phil some space.” And picking her mug up from the counter, she gestures towards the front of the house. “Come on, I need help moving some furniture.”

Two hours later, with a cache of home-made scones to take as a peace-offering and leaving Jericho behind in the warm, Chris sets off for home, hoping that he’s given Phil enough time and space to calm down. 

With the anger of the fight dissipated, and his perspective shifted slightly thanks to Alice’s quiet wisdom. Chris replays the worst of it in his mind over again as he rides the train back into the city. While Phil is the one with the really vicious tongue he knows that this fight is mostly his responsibility, he’s the one putting the promise of a ship ahead of his marriage, because for all he says this is about Jim, he’s lying to both of them. 

When Nero and the Narada had taken the Enterprise from him he’d been devastated, five years of planning and sacrifice lost in mere hours, a future burned to ashes in less time than it took for a ship to cross a single sector. And for all that he and Phil have spent the last two years making a new life together, free of the stress and tension of deep-space service, he still aches at the loss of the Enterprise, and the life she represented. Starship service has always been Chris’s first, best destiny; his rare combination of courage, intuition and incisive intelligence making him the quintessential deep-space commander; part diplomat, part explorer, part border guard and excise enforcer. He had loved life in the black and he hadn’t been ready to give it up. 

But as much as he had loved it, he loves Phil more and if he learned one thing from all those hellish hours when he lay bound and helpless in the company of a psychotic Romulan, it was that nothing was more important than those he loved. Not even his beloved Enterprise.

It’s only a little after 23:30 when he gets home, but the apartment is already dark when he lets himself in and he sheds coat and boots as quietly as possible before he gathers his courage and slides open the door to the bedroom. He can hear the quiet whisper of Phil breathing, and after a moment to let his eyes adjust to the dark he makes out the shape of him, curled under the covers.

“You awake?” 

The shape moves, rolling onto its back and then Phil’s voice comes out of the dark, still sarcastic, but devoid of anger or malice. “What do you think?”

“Yeah, sorry. Stupid question.” Chris takes the even tone of Phil’s question as a sign that they aren’t about to start fighting again and sits on the edge of the bed to shed his socks. “I’ll tell Alex no. I can’t imagine there’s a shortage of people wanting that center seat.” He can’t quite keep the disappointment out of his voice, but somewhere during that train ride under the bay he’d made some kind of peace with the idea of letting the Enterprise go back out into the black under someone else’s command. 

Phil sits up and Chris feels the gentle touch of a hand on his back, a soothing stroke up and down, and another sign that his anger has dissipated. “Yeah? Then what will they do with Jim? I heard they wanted to send him back to the Academy, like that’s a good idea. But if you aren’t around, who else the fuck is going to want him as an XO?”

“So what are you suggesting?” His heart rate ticks up, hope rekindled, and the prospect of a possible compromise from Phil makes him feels a little like he’s on an emotional roller-coaster. 

Phil sighs, and Chris can tell that what comes next doesn't come easily that, like Chris, he’s probably spent the whole evening going over their fight from every possible angle, dissecting his own part in it and trying to come up with a solution that will work for both of them. Still, Phil’s solution is far more of a concession than Chris could ever have hoped for. 

“Take her.” Phil pulls his knees up and wraps his arms around them, clearly telegraphing that this is painful for him. “Take her with my blessing. But just for two years, no more, just time to train Jim. Tell Marcus he needs to delay the five-year mission and send the Enterprise out on a shit ton of different missions – diplomatic runs, disaster response, border patrols. Get Jim as much experience as possible and then you can come home.”

Chris smiles in the dark and turns on the edge of the bed, reaching out in the semi-dark to take Phil’s hand and lift it to his mouth, laying a soft kiss on his knuckles.

“You didn’t get a comm from my mother, did you?”

“Only to say you were on your way home. The rest of this I came up with myself.”

Turning fully on the bed so that they are face to face, Chris holds Phil’s gaze, searching for any sign of hesitancy in his expression, “Why would you want do this? You’re going to hate it.”

“Because it’s a compromise you dumb fuck. If I say don’t go, you won’t, but you’ll resent me for the rest of your life, and I can’t live with that. But if I let you go on the five-year mission it’ll end us. We wouldn’t survive you being gone for that long, with no guarantees of furlough or regular assignments to Sector One. So this is a compromise, if Marcus will go for it. If he won’t then you’ll have to decide what you really want, but if you decide to stay home, then at least I won’t have blackmailed you into it.” Phil shakes his head. “Yes, I’ll hate you being out in the black, but I’d rather put up with you being out there for a couple of years than lose you permanently because I’m being a dick about this.” 

“What about you? You’re not coming with me?” Chris pulls away for a minute to shed the rest of his clothes, shivering slightly in the cool air as he stretches and kicks his jeans in the general direction of the hamper. 

Phil lies back again and watches with a faint smirk. “No, I’m staying put. I’m not uprooting the life we’ve made here, but I’ll be waiting for you when you come home.”

“I love you.” Naked, and totally unselfconscious about it, Chris can feel the faint stirrings of arousal as he looks down at Phil, who’s now looking back at him with undisguised need. He’s not surprised, sex has always been a part of their typical post-fight behavior and, despite their relatively low-key sex-life in the wake of his stroke, he has a feeling that their dry-spell is about to come to an end.

“I know, now come here and make me glad I married you.” And Phil tugs him close, his free hand moving to slide up Chris’s body, making him shiver as the fingers brush through the soft hair on his belly.

Gradually, and with an unexpected tenderness, Chris finds himself spread out on the bed, his arms pinned at the wrists, the warm weight of Phil’s body anchoring him to the mattress. He groans as Phil lowers himself down and begins to rut slowly in the cradle of his hips, tilting his head back into the pillows; his surrender as natural as breathing. 

“Oh, that’s it, that’s my good, gorgeous boy.” Phil’s voice has taken on the low, rough growl of familiar possession and the sound of it makes Chris whine with need. 

“Please…”

“Please what?” Phil drops his head and Chris can feel the humid heat of warm breath on his skin, the touch of a tongue along his jawline and he shivers at the nip of teeth at his ear. 

“Please fuck me.” And Chris is unutterably gratified at Phil’s shaky intake of breath, and the way he shivers as he pulls Chris in closer and whispers. 

“Oh god, yes….”


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Starfleet is attacked and Phil has to deal with Chris's death, and his family....warning for a death watch and a funeral in this one....

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks to **zauzat** for the swift and excellent beta....

“So, I heard you spent the afternoon cheating on me with that pretty girl from Iowa.”

Phil smiles at the sound of Chris laughing on the other end of the communicator and it takes a moment before he gets a response, “Can you blame me? You gotta admit, she’s pretty spectacular, and damn, does she have the moves.”

“You took her out?” Sticking his boots up on his desk Phil picks at the bread pudding that he’s just fetched from the break room in the trauma wing. It’s replicated and not nearly as good as what he would have found in the canteen downstairs, but he couldn’t afford the time or energy to make the journey, and his compensation is a few minutes of comm-chat with Chris. 

“Nah, just did a walk around, she’s in the middle of resupply.” 

There’s an echo on the transmission and the ambient noise of traffic, as if Chris is outside somewhere and Phil asks. “Where are you now?”

“Just about to go talk to Jim.”

Chris draws a breath and pauses and Phil can hear him saying something off to the side, as if he’s giving instructions to a ground car driver. “You tracked him down?”

“Not all that difficult once I got McCoy to cough up a location, he’s at McConville’s. I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

“One drink, Chris.” It takes a little effort, but Phil does a masterful job of not sounding like he’s nagging. 

“I know, I know.” There’s only the slightest hint of irritation in Chris’s tone and he goes on, smoothly changing the subject, “What are you doing?”

“Not much, it’s quiet here tonight. At least so far.” Phil stirs the rum sauce into the pudding and makes a face at the lack of any decently crusty bits on the bread as he waits for Chris to reply. 

“You’re going to be late, right?” And then Chris is talking to the driver again.

Phil pauses for a bite of bread pudding, and a swig of the chicory coffee he got to go with it, before he responds, “Working gamma, and staying for half of alpha – won’t be out of here until noon tomorrow – but then I’m taking 24 off, so we can do something tomorrow night.”

“Something that involves going to bed as soon as I get home?” 

The hopeful note in Chris’s voice makes Phil grin. “Sure, sweetheart, whatever you want.”

Phil is laughing when he signs off, as much as he is going to miss Chris when he ships out in – fuck it’s coming up fast – a little over two weeks, he can’t help but welcome the way the prospect of going back out in the black as the captain of a fuck-off-big-ship has renewed Chris’s spirit – and his sex drive. 

As the quiet evening stretches on, Phil makes serious inroads into his paperwork, only lifting his eyes from the dual-monitor displays to pick up his comm when it pipes up with Chris’s incoming message alert. [Called into a meeting at HQ, probably something to do with the attack in London. Call you later to let you know what’s going on.]

[Okay, talk later...] For a moment Phil almost appends an […I love you…] but then thinks better of it, Chris will call him when the meeting is over and he can tell him then. Distracted, he turns on the news feed on the wall screen and watches for a couple of minutes as the news anchors go over the same story they’ve been repeating for the last few hours; 42 dead in the center of London; unknown assailant; no word on why the Kelvin Memorial archive was targeted. The restatement of bare facts is followed up by a few minutes of interviews – the President of the Federation, the President of the United Federation of Europe and the Starfleet Commander-in-Chief (Europe) – all giving some version of the same we-won’t-submit-to-terrorists speech. Phil shakes his head and turns it off again, unsurprised by the lack of any substantial fresh news on the London attack and going back to his paperwork. 

The first Phil knows that anything is wrong is when the level five emergency alert flashes on his monitor even as his comm starts screaming at him and his adrenaline surges as he opens the message. [Level five emergency – Starfleet HQ, South Tower – all essential first responder and trauma personnel to report to Medical]. His office is five floors above the emergency reception center and when he comes out into the hallway to find that all three elevators are below him and going down, he heads for the stairs. 

By the time he reaches the ground floor the front-line first responders have already beamed directly to HQ and the second wave of ground-vehicle personnel are on their way.

“Do we have a casualty count?” He stops at the emergency admit desk, grateful that the Andorian admitting nurse is both level-headed and experienced. 

Zie shakes hir head “Sorry sir, nothing yet, Ndeto just reported in that they’re being held on the 80th floor vestibule until the conference rooms are secure.”

His heart rate ticks up when he realizes the location of the emergency, but the immediate need to prepare for casualties takes over, his anxiety deliberately boxed away as he calls all three of his trauma teams into the triage prep area. 

“No numbers on casualties yet, but I want all three teams ready to go. The on call teams are on their way, but it may take thirty minutes or more for them to get here. Meanwhile, I need you three…” He points to his three surgical leads, “…to configure your teams so that you can shed a surgical nurse and two techs, I’m going to need a team when I scrub in.”

The three young doctors all give their own idiosyncratic versions of a salute and then the sound of an intercom interrupts them and the voice of the emergency response team leader comes through, faint and distorted by the crackle of electrical interference. 

“Three dead at the scene and, so far, fifteen injured and en route. There’s probably going to be more once they clear the wreckage of the two lower floors.”

As he leaves the ante-room Phil tries not to think about Chris, concentrating instead on setting up his teams to support the emergency personnel when the casualties arrive, and trying not to listen to the speculation that is being fed by the two wall monitors that are turned to a live-news feed. 

“What the fuck happened? Do we know?”

The admit nurse has hir PADD out and turned to the internal Starfleet emergency update channel, “It looks like an aerial assault on the South Tower, then the jump-shuttle crashed and took out the two floors below whatever it had been firing at.”

“Jesus, I thought we had better security than that.” That’s Nye apRhys, Phil’s most experienced team leader.

“Yeah, no one’s saying anything, but the rumor is that it’s the same person that was responsible for the London attack and, whoever it is managed to hack the automated defense systems.” One of the med-techs is using his PADD to check the internal Starfleet message boards and Phil can see over his shoulder as the brief text conversations flash by on the screen. 

And then the siren that signals incoming casualties is wailing and the main doors slide open to admit the first of what will end up being more than two dozen critically injured personnel and the time for speculation is over. 

Triage is as efficient as ever and it takes less than fifteen minutes for Phil to find himself in the surgical changing room, the prospect of a multiple hour surgery ahead of him, and the last thing he does before he puts his comm in his locker and seals it is send a quick note to Chris.

[Trusting you’re okay. In surgery, check in with Ruchi when you get a chance.]

****

“Phil, Admiral Pike is here. He’s waiting in the scrub lounge.” Ruchi’s voice sounds strange over the closed-channel intercom that connects Phil, in the surgical suite, to the administration station outside.

After two and a half hours of successful but complicated surgery Phil is tired enough that it takes his brain a moment to process that there is something badly wrong. It’s not just Ruchi’s tone, which is flat and almost fearful, it’s the fact that she’s referring to Chris as “Admiral Pike”. Ruchi has known Chris almost as long as she’s known Phil. CMO on the Wellington when Chris had been the XO, she’d spent two years setting his bones and closing his wounds; checking him for concussions and infections and had even spent a god-awful two weeks treating him when he’d been laid out with Rigellian Tick fever, sweating and puking and too weak to stand. She hasn’t called Chris by his rank since the last time they served together, some twenty-five years before, and for the life of him Phil can’t figure out why she’s doing so now. 

And that is when he remembers that there is another Admiral Pike, and the ramifications of why he is waiting for Phil to get out of surgery are too awful to contemplate. 

As he walks out of the sterile bay into the surgical waiting area he can see Josh standing in the door to the corridor. He’s turned away talking to Barnett and goddammit if the man doesn’t have a hand on Josh’s shoulder, the fingers tense with some unknown emotion and Phil’s heart begins to pound just a little too fast, the sense of panic welling up. 

Phil is above all a calm man, forty years of starship service, almost all of it in some form of trauma medicine have given him a rare ability to separate himself from the moment, to keep his head when everything is going to hell all around him. But this sense of panic, this unique rush of blood and fear in his veins, this he only gets when Chris is in danger. 

And then Josh turns and the set of his face, the anguish in his eyes, is all that Phil can see as the panic escalates until his chest is so tight he can’t catch the breath that he needs to protest. Because he knows that look, he’s seen it on the faces of countless family members when he’s had to deliver the worst possible news of all, when he’s had to tell them that there is no hope, that the loved one they were trusting him to save, was gone. 

But this time he’s not the one delivering the news. And his vision grays out for a moment, his hand instinctively reaching for the wall to support himself, suddenly faint and nauseated.

“Phil…” Always deep, Josh’s voice is a full half-octave lower than usual and Phil realizes that he’s been crying and he shakes his head, the rational knowledge that there is nothing he can do to stop this warring with some absurd notion that if Josh doesn’t say it, if Phil doesn’t have to hear the words, then Chris will be okay. 

But he can’t stop time and Josh just shakes his head. “He’s gone, Phil. He’s gone.”

****

The Starfleet morgue occupies the north wing of the second sub-basement, the three autopsy suites and the communal stasis storage along the left side of the corridor and twelve individual stasis rooms on the right. 

Chris’s body is in the third room from the end.

Phil pauses outside the door, the thought of what lies beyond it overwhelming him for a moment. It’s been less than fifteen minutes since he walked out of surgery into a reality that would be forever changed, and he’s not sure what he feels; disbelief is the overriding sensation, not able yet to process the magnitude of the loss that will fuel the pain and grief that he knows is coming. But once he steps through this door, there will be no more illusion, no more pretending that it’s all some grotesque mistake and, with a last deep breath, Phil sets his jaw and raises his hand to the entry sensor. 

The room is discreetly dim, but Phil can’t miss the hunched figure sitting on the short padded couch that’s almost hidden by the stasis table. He deliberately looks past the opaque field that he knows is covering Chris and watches as Jim looks up. The kid looks wrecked, his uniform flecked with debris, his hands and face filthy but for the pale streaks of tears on his cheeks, still he manages to push himself to his feet and shuffle a few steps towards Phil. 

“I’m sorry, I probably shouldn't be here, but I didn’t want him to be alone.” His voice is thick with misery and strangely it fortifies Phil; shoves him unceremoniously into caretaker mode and gives him the little extra nudge he needs to wall off the grief that keeps threatening to take him to his knees.

“It’s okay, son.”

“I wasn’t there. I’m so sorry, I wasn’t with him when he died.” Jim is crying quietly, his shoulders shaking and Phil reaches for him, curves a hand around his neck and tugs him gently into a tight hug. “It’s okay, Jim. It’s okay. Just tell me he wasn’t alone.”

“No, no Spock was there. When I got back to the conference room Spock was….” Jim’s voice trails off in a sob, and the rest of the sentence is lost leaving Phil to wonder later – much later, when he’s able to think straight again and recall more than dim, disjointed fragments of these terrible hours – what exactly Spock was doing as Chris was dying. 

But now he stands, mute with misery, and lets Jim cry into his shoulder for a long moment. Finally, his breath still coming in slightly hitched inhales, Jim pulls away and chokes out, “I should leave you…” His voice trails off, as if he doesn’t know how to finish the sentence and he picks up another thread. “I should go find Bones.”

“He’s probably going to be in surgery the rest of the night, Jim.” Phil had caught a quick glance of the board as he’d been leaving the surgical floor and he’d seen McCoy’s name next to one of the neurosurgery theatres. “Just go home and try to get some rest. You’re going to need it tomorrow.” 

Phil’s operating in a haze of numb exhaustion himself, but he knows he has to stay focused. Josh and Alice will be here in a few minutes and they’re going to want to say goodbye to Chris, to have one last look at their only son; the child they raised and loved and sent out into the universe to make it a better place. And Phil needs to see him first, needs to make the reality of his death concrete before he can deal with anyone else’s pain. 

Jim just nods, wiping a hand across his face. “Let me know if there’s anything I can do, yeah?” 

“Sure.” Phil rubs his hand over Jim’s shoulder one last time. “On you go.” And then he turns back to the stasis table.

Designed to shield observers from whatever trauma the deceased has suffered and provide a some small amount of dignity in death, the stasis field will also as preserve the body unchanged for autopsy and Phil hesitates for a moment before he grits his teeth and wills himself to dial down the opacity on the top third of the field. 

Chris comes into view slowly, his eyes mercifully closed, only a slight trace of blood at the corner of his mouth to betray the fact that he’s not asleep. And Phil has to close his eyes for a second, the sense of desolation suddenly so intense that he can’t breathe. No matter how many times they’ve come close to this, no matter how many times he’s been presented with the possibility of outliving Chris, the reality of it is shattering in a way that he can barely comprehend. 

 

For a moment he reaches through the field and strokes Chris’s hair back from his forehead. The curls of a few days ago are gone and there’s grit and debris in the shorter hair on his crown and in the graying sideburns that Phil loves so much. He brushes at it, obeying some irrational impulse to clean him up before Alice sees him, and in the spirit of that impulse, uses his thumb to wipe away the trace of blood on his cheek. And as he touches skin, still warm, still pliant, kept that way by the stasis field, he finally breaks for a moment, his breath hitching as the tears spill over and one huge, aching sob wells up from inside him. 

“Oh god, Chris…oh god…”

For a long moment he lets himself cry, crushed by the sudden awareness what a future without Chris will be; bleak and empty and desperately lonely. Then, just as he can feel the grief beginning to overwhelm him, his chest tight with pain, there’s a tap at the door and he forces himself to pull it together, scrubbing a hand over his face as he manages to bark out a rough, “Come in.”

Josh has his arm around Alice, but Phil can’t tell which one of them needs the support. She looks like Phil feels, gray and tired and overwhelmed, her hair pulled back in an unceremoniously severe twist, her eyes devastatingly sad. But her spine is straight and her step sure as she leaves Josh’s side and comes to pull Phil close.

“Oh, Phil…”

He endures the hug for only a moment before he eases away, too much sympathy right now and he’ll shatter completely, and they have enough to endure – he won’t burden them with his grief, at least not until he can’t bear it alone. 

As if she understands Alice backs off and pats his chest. “Can we say goodbye?”

“Yeah…” his voice is so rough Phil is surprised that he can utter anything intelligible, but he touches Alice’s hand where it’s resting against his heart, feeling the bones, fine and strong beneath the skin, just as Chris’s had been. “Yeah, I’ll turn the stasis field off for a while.”

He can’t stay for this, he doesn’t have the strength to hold himself together in the face of their grief and with a brief touch to his father-in-law’s arm he excuses himself. 

****

Intending to head to the nearest replicator for coffee he’s suddenly struck with a desperate need to know more about what happened and after stopping to get a mug of the strongest roast the machine produces, he goes in search of the leader of the emergency response unit. 

Au Min Kay is sprawled on the lumpy sofa of the trauma response unit break room. Lanky and rail-thin, he’s dressed in scrubs that are at least two sizes too large, with his hair still wet from his post call-out shower, and he looks up as Phil walks through the door. His face is tired and pale as he pulls himself upright and offers, “Damn Phil, I’m so sorry. We did everything we could for him.”

Phil waves a hand in dismissal as he slumps down into one of the sturdy chairs across from the couch and focuses on setting his coffee down very carefully. “Don’t doubt that Min, not for a second. I just want to know what happened.”

Sitting up straight, running a hand distractedly through his hair, Au gathers his thoughts for a moment before he goes on to explain. “The call-out was really fast, we were on our way literally seconds after the attack started, but then it took 15 minutes to get the all clear to access the scene. I don’t know what the fuck was going on in there. But by the time we got in Chris was already gone. H’vareth tried to resuscitate him for a couple of minutes, but once they were able to do a chest scan it was obvious that there was too much damage. If we’d been able to get him back here, if they’d dropped the beam out restriction….” His voice trails away as he runs out of words.

Phil drops his head into his hands, suddenly overwhelmed by all the factors that had conspired against Chris’s survival. He’d always thought it a good idea that Starfleet Command HQ was a transporter-secure facility; with only ID-locked, pad-based beam-out permitted, and the buildings hardened against beaming in, or random point-to point transport within them. That they adhered to the beaming restrictions even during an emergency, an even better idea, cutting off any possibility of transporter technology being used by assailants in an attack. But he aches at the thought that transporters could have saved Chris; if he’d had lived long enough to get to a transporter room; if he’d been injured in a building where point-to-point beaming was permitted; if he hadn’t been the Captain of the fucking USS Enterprise – he’d probably still be alive. But all of those circumstances had combined in a perfect storm of catastrophe and now Chris was dead because he’d been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

“What actually killed him?”

Au shakes his head, “I’m pretty sure the formal cause of death is going to be heart failure as a result of a catastrophic pneumo-thorax. He was hit full-chest with an energy burst that crushed the chest wall, broke all his ribs and probably caused massive heart trauma. We’ll know more after the autopsy.”

Phil nods, numb as the analytical part of his brain tries to process what Au is saying. But for once all his knowledge as a physician, all his analytical ability to process Chris’s chances of survival given his injuries, desert him and he leans forward and presses the heels of his hands against his temples, trying to fight back the monumental headache that has formed behind his eyes. 

“Thanks Min, I need to get back.” And he stands, picking up his coffee cup and heading back to the replicator before he goes back down to the morgue. 

****

Alice is standing at Chris’s head when Phil gets back to the stasis room and she leans down and presses a last kiss to her son’s forehead, standing with only the slightest shake in her shoulders to take Josh’s hand. Her face is wet, her voice shaky as she whispers, “We’ll leave you with him.”

Phil nods. “Yeah, I won’t let him be alone.”

“Good, good, I don’t think I could bear that.” Her voice breaking on the last few words, she reaches out one last time to touch Chris’s cheek and then covers her face with her free hand, weeping quietly. 

He feels the firm grip of Josh’s hand on his shoulder, a brief squeeze on his way past and a gruff, grief-rough whisper, “After you’re done here, come home – please.” And it’s all Phil can do to acknowledge him with a curt nod. 

As he goes to sit down on the couch again he realizes that he’d never turned his comm back on after surgery and he pulls it out, a quick check revealing that there are more than two dozen messages waiting for his attention. The thought of dealing with them is overwhelming and he goes to shut it down again. He knows there are people that need to be contacted; One, commanding the Yorktown somewhere off in the Bassen Rift; Cait Barry, out at the Alpha Centauri engineering design facility; John Mowbray’s widow, Rae; and so many others, but he can’t even think about that right now and he shuts off the comm, shoving it deep in his pocket and turning his gaze back to the still, pale form on the stasis table. 

“Fuck you, Chris, how could you do this to me?” For all the harshness of his words, Phil’s not really angry; he knows that will come later. He’s just bewildered and he brushes the back of his fingers lightly up Chris’s cheek. “You weren’t even in the black, goddammit, you were in what should have been the most secure place on the fucking planet.” And now, for just a moment, Phil is washed with a bitter anger, not at Chris, but at Starfleet. As afraid as he had been that Chris would die out in the black, far away and alone; the thought that he’d fallen here, in the heart of the most secure facility on the planet is somehow so much harder to bear. 

As quickly as it came, the anger is gone and as he goes to turn the stasis field back on, mindful that Chris’s body needs to remain in a state as close to when he died as possible, Phil is struck by all the little things that will need to be taken care of in the next few days. Exhausted he sits back down on the hard couch and leans back against the wall, his head full of the miserable logistics that accompany the end of a life. There’s a funeral to arrange and thank Christ, Chris has always had detailed end-of-life instructions in his personnel file; an apartment to deal with – Phil can’t bring himself to think about that yet – clearing Chris’s clothes, disposing of the things he wants given as bequests, even cleaning that god-awful French cave-cheese that he loved so much out of the fridge. For the briefest moment Phil can feel himself about to laugh – hysteria rather than humor – and then it hits him how totally insignificant all of this is. Chris is dead, and right now Phil can’t imagine that anything else will ever matter – ever again – and he puts his head down in his hands and lets the grief overwhelm him once more. 

This deep beneath the chaos and confusion of Starfleet medical main floor, the still silence is total, the catastrophe of the night contained to the floors above and Phil‘s silent vigil continues into the night, numb with shock and grief, as the hours pass in stunned solitude. He’s familiar enough with the morgue procedures that he knows he won’t be disturbed until the early day shift comes on at 06:00. There’s no urgency to Chris’s autopsy, no mystery as to his identity or the cause of his death. 

At some point in the early hours he drifts into a half-sleep, coming awake with a start as his head hits the wall behind him. For a fraction of a second he’s disoriented, unsure of where he is or why he’s sitting upright on a hard couch when he should be asleep in his bed…with Chris…

….with Chris…

….and then reality hits him again and, unprepared for the pain, he curls forward until his elbows are on his knees, his hands wrapped over the top of his head as he shudders with the force of his grief. The agony is crushing, the urge to just let the sorrow claim him almost overwhelming and all he wants is to descend down into some deep, dark place in his soul where he can rage and scream and cry out his anger at a universe that doesn’t give a fuck about his pain. 

When his vigil is finally over and he goes to sign out of the hospital he finds that Josh has left instructions for a ground car to bring him to the house on Piper Loop and he capitulates, unable to fathom going back to an apartment that will never again know Chris’s presence. 

****

Even in the 23rd century it is in the rites and rituals of death that tradition still flourishes and on an unexpectedly bright and sunny February afternoon the hillside chapel that is attached to the Starfleet crematorium and memorial garden is overflowing with mourners as Phil steps out of the ground car and stands with his in-laws behind the honor guard that will escort Chris’s casket to its final resting place. 

Slate gray and draped in the distinctive blue and white of the Federation flag it floats on a discreet anti-grav sled and, as the six young lieutenants – clad in the most formal of dress grays – maneuver it towards the chapel, Phil freezes for a moment. His chest tight, breath catching in his throat, he’s suddenly terrified that he can’t go through with this, until Alice takes his hand and squeezes tightly, her voice strong despite the grief that’s threaded through it. “Come on, let’s go say goodbye.”

The chapel is tiny and the gray and black-clad mourners have spilled out onto the grass outside. The solemn crowd parts respectfully to let the family pass through into the dim interior and Phil acknowledges the quietly murmured condolences with a curt nod of his head as he makes his way to the space that’s been reserved for the immediate family. 

It’s only as he gets to the front of the chapel that he raises his head and he almost loses his composure when he’s faced with Charlie Mowbray-Maiarohe. Chris’s godson is dressed in his cadet reds, his face streaked with the tears that have tracked down the shallow grooves of his tā moko. At nineteen, and a full head taller than Phil, he nonetheless seems very much like the small boy that Phil remembers from those early trips to New Zealand when he and Chris were first together. Now he’s standing with his younger brother, and Phil aches for them both, it’s less than two years since he’d stood with them at their father’s funeral, they’re too young to have to go through this again. Sparing Charlie the embarrassment of a hug, he squeezes the young man on the arm. “He’d be proud of you Charlie, they both would.” 

He doesn’t get the chance to say more as a dark-robed figure appears on his left and he finds himself in the solemn presence of the Ambassador from New Vulcan. 

“I grieve with thee.” Sarek blinks and for just a moment, as Phil looks into his eyes, a veil is drawn back and the deep well of grief that Phil is drowning in is reflected back at him. “He was a good man, and my son…” Sarek pauses to clarify, “…Selek…loved him dearly.” And suddenly Phil understands that Sarek is here, not as a representative of New Vulcan, not as a representative of his son in _this_ universe, but as a representative of a man-out-of-time, a man who had known his Chris in a very different world and for a moment he wants to ask whether he knows if Chris had fared better in that other universe. 

But then there is a hand on his arm and it’s Win Kirk “Oh, Phil…” 

He turns from Sarek, with a nod of acknowledgement, to accept Win’s hug, holding her, tight and trembling, until Rae Maiarohe catches his eye and tilts her head to the dais at the front where the honor guard has stepped back from the flag-draped casket. It’s time to begin, and he takes his place between Alice on his right and Chris’s half-sister Meredith on his left. 

As the opening bars of Elgar’s _Nimrod_ begin to fill the air, soft and mournful, a sudden upwelling of sorrow washes through Phil and he consciously forces it back, deep down inside where he can control it. He knows that he should be fully present, committing every second of this last chapter of Chris’s life to memory, but he’s too raw, the pain too sharp every time he surfaces and becomes fully aware of what’s going on around him. 

Still he looks up as each new speaker rises from the crowd to talk about Chris, and in those moments he distracts himself, wearing Chris’s academy ring on his right hand, the face of it turned into his palm, he makes a fist, tight and painful as the metal cuts into his skin. 

The service is mercifully short. Rae speaks – her words brief and heartfelt – about the Chris she and John had known in the Academy and all the years of friendship that they had shared. Barnett speaks as the representative for Starfleet, and the odd absence of Alex Marcus at the funeral of his self-proclaimed protégé is disconcerting enough to briefly make Phil lift his head and frown, looking quizzically at Josh, who shrugs and shakes his head. 

And then Charlie stands and, knowing what’s coming, Phil has to look down and bite the inside of his cheek to quell the sudden upsurge of emotion. Chris and John had both loved WWI poets and at John’s funeral his brother Dave had read Kipling’s _My Boy Jack_ ; today, in lieu of his uncle who hasn’t managed to make the trip from New Zealand, Charlie steps up and reads a different work by the same poet and as his voice breaks on the last lines of _Gethsemane_ , Phil feels Alice take his hand and grip it tightly. 

In the silence that follows Phil can hear the low, muffled sounds of grief behind him and keeps his own head low to hide the slow, quiet fall of tears that he can’t hold back any longer. It's only the faint sound of anguish at his left, and the tight squeeze of Alice’s fingers in his, that makes Phil finally raise his head, his breath hitching softly as he watches the honor guard fold the flag and when the young woman with the sad eyes and iron-jaw hands him the triangular cloth burden his fingers go white and bloodless as he grips it tightly and lowers his head once more. 

Despite the fact that neither of them had so much as a gram of religious feeling in them, Chris – ever mindful of naval tradition – had requested one traditional Christian hymn to end his service and Phil swallows hard as the strains of _Eternal Father, strong to save_ accompany the mourners as they slowly leave the chapel. He keeps his head lowered as the rest of the mourners file out, raising it only when he feels a touch on his shoulder and hears the voice of the chaplain as he’s leaving. “Take as long as you need.”

And then there’s only the three of them left in the chapel, the three who loved Chris the most dearly, and Phil knows now that it’s finally time for them to say goodbye. 

Josh moves first, setting his hands on the casket and leaning down to touch his forehead to the curved metal of the lid; his shoulders shake for a moment, but if he says anything it’s too soft for Phil to hear and then he stands straight and turns, his face set and expressionless even if his eyes are wet. He holds out a hand to Alice and she moves forward in turn, brushing her fingers across the letters of Chris’s name on the silver plaque that is set into the lid of the casket and her voice is so soft as she murmurs. “Goodbye, my darling.” 

She squeezes Phil’s hand once, hard, even as Josh touches his shoulder and whispers, his voice broken with pain, “We'll be outside.”

And Phil nods, wordless as he takes his place by the head of the casket. 

The metal is cool to the touch, and he lets his hands rest on it for a moment before leaning down to kiss the plaque and rest his cheek on the smooth surface. He’s suspended in a moment of disbelief, his rational mind aware that his Chris is already gone, he’s nonetheless terrified at the thought that in the next few minutes all that is left of him will be reduced to ash and for a long moment he’s unable to move, unable to say the final words that will let him go. 

In the end it’s that eidetic memory that Chris loved so much that saves him, as the words of e.e. cummings _i carry your heart_ , come to him, and he whispers them, each touch of lips to the casket taking a piece of his heart with it.

_i carry your heart with me(i carry it in_  
 _my heart)i am never without it(anywhere_  
 _i go you go, my dear; and whatever is done_  
 _by only me is your doing, my darling)_  
 _i fear_  
 _no fate(for you are my fate, my sweet)i want_  
 _no world(for beautiful you are my world, my true)_  
 _and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant_  
and whatever a sun will always sing is you 

_here is the deepest secret nobody knows_  
 _(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud_  
 _and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows_  
 _higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)_  
 _and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart_

_i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)_

“I will always, always love you, my beautiful boy.” He hesitates as his voice finally begins to give out, finishing in a broken whisper. “Goddamn you, you were my life and I have no idea how I’m going to live it without you.”

He touches the casket one last time and it takes more strength than he ever believed he possessed to put one foot in front of the other and walk out of the chapel without a single backward glance.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With Chris gone, Phil now has to deal with the destruction of San Francisco, Jim's recovery and finding out about the mind-meld...he's not happy with Spock.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beta, the inestimable **zauzat**

Asleep – thanks to a self-prescribed shot of synthesized tetrahydrocannabinol – for a little over twelve of the eighteen hellish hours since Chris’s funeral, Phil is woken by his communicator, screeching out another level five emergency signal, and it takes him two or three seconds to clear the fog in his head enough to roll over and slap his hand on the screen to shut it up before it rouses the whole house. He opens the channel to find Rear-Admiral Aoife Ní’hUallacháin, Chief of Starfleet Medical, on the other end. “Phil? I hate to do this to you, but have you seen the news?”

“The what? You’re fucking joking Aoife, I’ve been asleep for the last twelve hours.” Phil sits up and scrubs a hand over his face, trying to ignore the sensation of being kicked in the chest as his consciousness processes, once again, that Chris is gone. But he doesn’t have time to dwell on it as Ní’hUallacháin goes on, her tone grave and slightly desperate. “Turn on your PADD.” 

He does as he’s told, and stares in disbelief as the Starfleet Information Service overrides his usual startup status page to broadcast a scene of almost incomprehensible destruction. Not entirely sure what he’s looking at – although it’s clear that much of it is the wreckage of San Francisco’s 23rd century financial district – he frowns and asks, “Earthquake?” 

Even as he’s saying it he knows it’s a stupid conclusion to draw. The scale of the destruction might look like an earthquake, but something of that magnitude would have impacted a far greater swathe of the city, and would certainly have woken Phil, drug-induced sleep notwithstanding. 

“No, this is what happens when 200,000 tonnes of starship hits the city. It’s a feckin’ nightmare over here.” Aoife’s accent has thickened with stress, betraying her North Dublin origins. “We’re sending casualties to Richmond and Alameda, even down to Palo Alto and Stanford, but I’ve had to send staff over there too. I’m sorry darlin’, but I need you back.”

They send a flitter for him, the flash rail is down – all of the tunnels through the main part of the city rendered structurally unsound by the impact – and as they fly round the northern curve of the city the numb sense of futility and grief that have blanketed all Phil’s waking hours since the night of the attack on HQ is slowly replaced by a focused concentration – a recognition that he has work to do. 

Ní’hUallacháin is on the comm to him as they pass the Starfleet Medical trauma center at the eastern edge of the Presidio, explaining where they want him. “We don’t have the capacity to handle everyone in the trauma centers, so we’ve set up three mobile trauma units. I want you to oversee the one at Union and Powell.”

Phil tries to get his head around the fact that even with five major trauma centers in the region there are too many casualties for the hospitals and then the flitter rounds Gashouse Cove and he sees the path of destruction. Everything is gone, from Fisherman’s Wharf all the way to Columbus and Broadway, a swathe of at least twelve by five city blocks. The one time TransAmerica – now Nagano, Beria and Chin – Pyramid has survived to mark the southern limit of the destruction, and Starfleet HQ at 101 Lombard is sitting untouched on the east side of Telegraph Hill but the entire northern section of the financial district is gone, the buildings crushed and toppled, a mess of metal and glass and seismic-stable concrete. He can’t even begin to fathom how many casualties there are, how many people would have been at work in the middle of a Thursday morning. 

Then, as the flitter starts to descend into the grassed triangle at the southwest corner of Washington Square, he sees the crushed remains of the church of SS Peter and Paul on the northern edge of the park. For just a moment the cloak of professional calm that he’s begun to pull around himself wavers as he thinks about the parochial school attached to the church. There aren’t many schools in the heart of the city, and this one has been around for over 230 years, small and successful and full of bright kids in green and gray uniforms that he’d occasionally seen when he and Chris had met for lunch at Silvio’s on the corner of Filbert. He takes a breath, shoving away any thought of Chris or the fact that they won’t ever meet for lunch again, focusing instead on the carnage in front of him, wondering how many of those children will survive long enough to make it into surgery.

By the time the flitter sets him down the Medical logistics corps has already set up ten of the portable medical pods that Starfleet usually uses for off-world disasters. Small, efficient and fully equipped for triage, diagnostics and surgery, Phil’s never before seen them deployed on Earth, and their presence, squat and gray amid the destruction makes the scale of the disaster all the more real.

He spends three days in the Washington Square mobile unit, interspersing twenty-hour shifts with four-hour naps in the break-pod, and then they move him to the unit at the Hyde Street Pier, where the first responder teams are still digging survivors out of the debris field created by the wave that the Vengeance had generated as she came ashore. 

After six days, when there are no more live survivors and the operation shifts from rescue to recovery, Phil has figured out that a combination of working himself to exhaustion and then self-medicating with sTHC when he absolutely has to sleep, keeps the pain manageable and leaves him – mostly – functional. 

He’s just finished supervising the transfer of the last of the post-surgical patients from the Hyde Street Pier mobile unit when his comm buzzes annoyingly against his hip and he opens it to find another apologetic message from his boss. 

“Need you in my office, as soon as you’re done.”

Exhausted and trembling slightly from a combination of caffeine, low-dose stims and adrenaline release Phil knows he must look like hell when he finally gets to Ní’hUallacháin’s office fifteen minutes later, but the Chief of Starfleet Medical barely looks any better and he suspects that she’s been in surgery herself for much of the last week. Sliding a chunky glass filled with a generous measure of bourbon across her desk, she sighs and raises a glass of her own. “You’re off for twenty-four hours, Phil. I suggest you sleep for as much of it as you can, because there is some serious shit going down on the 18th floor and I need you back here and ready to take over.”

Phil takes a measured sip of the bourbon and frowns. The 18th floor is the high-security wing of Starfleet Medical, used for highly infectious or irradiated patients, or those with new or unclassified pathogens and for sequestering patients away from the press and the public while SI works through their debriefings. “What’s going on?”

Ní’hUallacháin holds up a data chip and Phil’s frown deepens, medical records are all stored on a central server, there should be no need to pass information manually. “Do not read this on a Starfleet PADD – use one of your own.” She hands it over and Phil flips it through his fingers waiting for her to continue. “These are Jim Kirk’s unaltered medical records direct from McCoy’s personal PADD, together with a set of his treatment notes. Only five or six people know the real story of what happened on the Enterprise last week, and Vicky would like to keep it that way.”

There’s a measure of comfort in knowing that the Surgeon General is behind this – whatever it is – but Phil still frowns again and rubs the chip between his fingers. “What happened to Jim?”

“Read the file. To be honest, we’re not even all that sure what happened up there, but I need someone I trust as his attending. McCoy’s been filling in but, for obvious reasons, that’s not ideal.” Phil assumes that the obvious reason is that a spouse is rarely allowed to function as the primary physician for a patient, at least outside of starship duty, and he sighs. “Okay, okay I’ll go grab some sleep in the trauma lounge, and then read this through and report in for alpha tomorrow.” At least it’ll save him from having to think about Chris for a little longer. 

“Go home, for Christ’s sake. At least for a while, get out of the hospital.”

He swallows hard for a moment, trying not to think about the apartment and the fact that he hasn’t set foot over the threshold since Chris’s death. “I don’t have a home Aiofe, not anymore.”

She takes a breath, as if she’s going to contradict him, and then releases it in a long sigh. “I’m sorry, darlin’. I am so sorry.”

Sinking the rest of the bourbon, Phil nods an acknowledgement, not trusting himself to speak and then taps the empty glass on the desk top. “Fill that up again, it’ll help me sleep.”

****

He doesn’t quite take the full twenty-four hours, showing up on the 18th floor two hours before the start of alpha shift. Bearing coffee for two and a bag of calorie-dense pastries, Phil is not at all surprised to find McCoy slumped over Jim’s bio-bed, his dark head buried in the white thermal blanket, one hand stretched out so that he can twine his fingers into Jim’s. He pauses at the door for a moment, unsure if McCoy is asleep, or just too emotionally and physically played out to care that someone has just walked into the room and – aware that he hasn't seen McCoy since the morning before Chris’s death – he steels himself, not sure he can handle another round of condolences, especially not from this man, who has been through so much himself in the last week.

He sets the makeshift breakfast down on a lab-table and, once he’s sure that he won’t break under the weight of sympathy from someone else that knew and loved his Chris, Phil reaches out and lays a hand on Len’s shoulder. “Hey, you awake?”

McCoy startles, his head coming up off the sheet, wide-eyed and instantly, instinctively, combative. Phil backs off slightly, but before he has time to even hold out a hand in placation McCoy’s confused anger is gone, his eyes suddenly dark with sorrow as he pushes himself up off the bed and takes a step closer. 

“Oh Jesus, Phil…I don’t know what...” 

Phil cuts him off with a shake of his head. “Nothing to say Len, there’s nothing to say.” And his meaning is clear, nothing will make this better, nothing will bring Chris back, nothing will soothe the constant ache in Phil’s chest, and right now talking about it will just carve the lines of pain deeper into his heart. He takes a breath and pushes on, trying to focus on the job at hand as McCoy sits back down next to Jim. “I’m taking over as his attending, did Ní’hUallacháin tell you?”

McCoy nods and then gestures to the wall-screen, “They’ve already changed the board.” He vacillates, discomfort clearly telegraphed in his expression and the set of his body, and Phil can see the hesitation in him as he pauses before asking, “Are you okay with this?”

“With you bringing Jim back from the dead? Or with you doing it using some untested super-blood?” Phil is amazed at how casually he manages to say the words “bringing Jim back from the dead” because when he’d first read McCoy’s notes he’d been simultaneously fascinated and horrified by the implications of this super-serum. For all the advances of 23rd century medicine, he is all too painfully – personally – aware that death is permanent. Except now, apparently at least for one very, very lucky young man, it isn’t. 

He’d spent the night in one of the surgical break pods – little sleeping cubicles just large enough for a mattress, a rudimentary replicator and a wall-mounted comm-screen – his fitful sleep disturbed by fleeting, shadowed nightmares until he’d given up any attempt at rest and he’d pulled up McCoy’s data on his personal PADD. Once he’d read the report of Jim’s sacrifice – not fooled for an instant by the clinical brevity of McCoy’s notes – he’d had to pause, his chest tight as he fought back the wave of sorrow as he imagined the horrific moment when McCoy had opened the body bag to find his husband’s lifeless body within it. The parallels with his own suffering so overt, so unendurably piercing, that he’d laid the PADD aside and curled in on himself for a moment, breathing hard until he was able to control the urge to break down once more. 

And then had come the miracle, Jim held in cryo-stasis as McCoy frantically refined a serum from the blood of a 300-year old super-human. The notes now were disjointed and rambling – almost stream of consciousness in some parts – and Phil could feel the urgency – the panic – bleeding off the screen as McCoy desperately worked to give Jim the chance of life. That his efforts had worked was both exhilarating and deeply disturbing and as Phil finished up by reading though the judiciously edited official version of what had happened he had not been at all surprised that the Starfleet Medical brass wanted this kept under wraps, the thought of what SI and the weapons research division would do with this kind of information was terrifying. 

“Either, both?”

With a shake of his head, Phil moves to the wall-screen and scans all the relevant stats. He’s not surprised that Jim has been in a coma since the transfusion, his cells are undergoing a massive, traumatic regeneration that is keeping his body temperature, oxygen consumption and white-cell production far above normal. With no real template for what a genetically augmented serum can do to the human body, all they can do for now is treat the side effects. There’s an oxygen-diffuser patch on Jim’s carotid artery, he’s sleeping on a cold gel-pad to try to keep his temperature down and every infinitesimal change in his hematocrit and leukocytes is being closely monitored. But there’s no indication that his condition is deteriorating, and from the medical notes and his brief scan of the board, Phil has no reason to think that Jim won’t come out of this, eventually. And _that_ , is a fucking miracle.

He turns back to McCoy with a sigh. “Len, he’s alive, he’s alive.” He runs a hand through his hair, still damp from the quick shower that he’d taken in the surgical locker-room, and he has to grit his teeth against the wave of regret and sorrow that wells up as he thinks of how close McCoy came to sharing his pain. “Everything else is just details.”

McCoy turns as if to protest, his eyes dark with all the conflicted emotion of a man who is neither sure that he did the right thing, nor that he did it for the right reasons, and for just a second Phil’s washed with a flash of white-hot rage. Unable to comprehend that McCoy could regret – for even a second – the actions that spared him the unbearable, unthinkable pain of losing a spouse. The anger dies in an instant and along with it the flash of unwarranted jealousy at McCoy’s good fortune, and all that remains is an uneasy exhaustion as Phil wonders how to get that across to a man who, like himself, has always held his codes of professional ethics sacred above everything else.

Picking his coffee up from the lab bench Phil hands the bag of pastries to McCoy and, with a last glance at the board to reassure himself that Jim is stable, Phil points McCoy in the direction of the small anteroom that is a part of Jim’s medical suite. He settles himself in one of the small, too-soft couches and wraps his hands around his coffee mug, taking a slow breath before he begins. 

“You can’t second guess yourself on this Len. Think about what you felt in that moment when you knew he was dead.” For a moment Phil hesitates, unsure if he can do this, if he can lay himself open this way. It’s hard enough to live with the constant heartbreak of losing Chris, laying it out for someone else to see might just be more than he can give. But he has to try. He has to find some way to convince McCoy of all that he has been spared, no matter the cost; because left to his own devices, Phil knows that Len will eat himself up with guilt over the ethical nightmare that surrounds his use of Khan’s blood to resuscitate Jim. 

“Imagine that moment played out day after day, hour after hour, every time your conscious mind isn’t occupied you’ll go back to that instant when you knew he was gone, when you opened that body bag and saw him dead.” His voice hitches for a moment as the vision of Chris, pale and still in that cool, dim mortuary annex, is suddenly fresh in his mind. He sets his coffee down on an end table and covers his face, pressing his index fingers into the corners of his eyes to stay yet another round of tears; ruthlessly suppressing the memory, focusing instead on the task of securing Jim’s recovery, of making sure that he doesn’t become one more name on the Starfleet memorial wall.

After a moment it’s McCoy who breaks the silence. “I don’t even know if it’s gonna work. The immunosuppressants are killing him.” 

Phil looks up and the terror in McCoy’s eyes belies the steadiness of his hands and the clinical detachment in his tone. Phil shakes his head. “You’ve got to believe it, Len. We can handle the side effects, he just has to hold out until his own immune system adapts.” 

He studies the dregs of his coffee for a moment and then manages a faint, faint smile, a wry, ironic twist of his mouth. “He’s a fighter Len, just like Chris was, all he needs is a chance and you gave him that. He’ll come through for you. Besides…” and Phil hesitates again, raising his eyes until he can meet McCoy’s gaze, determination firing through him “….Jim is Chris’s legacy, and Jim will fucking live because I will _not_ let that legacy die, I will not let everything he did go to waste. Chris had faith in Jim, he believed in him in a way that no-one else…” he holds up a warning finger against the protest he knows is coming from McCoy “…no, Len – not even you…no-one else did. And I will do everything in my power to see that Jim fulfills that promise, and that he does it in Chris’s name. So I have no fucking intention of letting him die.” 

For all the determination in his statement his voice wavers slightly at the last few words and Phil blinks hard and looks down at his feet, surprised at his own vehemence, surprised at how desperately he needs Jim to live, grateful when McCoy reaches out to grip his hand in silent solidarity.

****

It takes another four days for Jim’s condition to finally stabilize and it’s Phil that first notices that his leukocyte production is finally plateauing at somewhere around normal even when the dose of immunosuppressants is kicked down a notch. A few hours later Jim’s temperature begins to creep down and his oxygen saturation improves and McCoy smiles for the first time in days. “Goddammit…” he leans over and presses his hand to Jim’s forehead, as if he’s reassuring himself that the stat board isn’t lying to them. “…he’s gonna pull through.” 

And then McCoy sits down hard, shaking as he very obviously tries to stop himself from breaking down in relief and when Phil rests a hand on his shoulder he can feel the shudders rippling through the broad frame as all the stress and tension of the last week and a half slowly begins to dissipate. “You need to get out of here, go get a decent meal, have a drink and go to bed for twelve hours.” Phil squeezes gently. “Doctor’s orders.”

The look he gets in response is positively mutinous. “Not going’ anywhere, not ‘til he wakes up.”

Knowing better than to argue with McCoy when he’s in this kind of mood Phil just excuses himself and fires off a quick comm. If he issues a genuine order for McCoy to get out of here and rest, McCoy will obey but he’ll go off and bury himself in medical journals and research, trying to anticipate all the therapies Jim’s going to need in his recuperation. He needs a keeper, just for the night, and Phil knows just the man for the job.

Lieutenant-Commander Scott has been a regular visitor to Jim’s room over the last few days and the normally buoyant engineer has been uncharacteristically solemn, carrying the burden of being the man who watched Jim die, of being the man who’d had to tell McCoy that his husband had succumbed to a massive fatal dose of radiation. Phil thinks he deserves to be the first to hear that Jim will be okay, and in return he can drag McCoy away for a few hours. 

“He’s goin’ to be alright then?” Scotty positively beams when Phil meets at the door to the anteroom and Phil nods. “He’s going to be fine, hasn’t woken up yet, but that’ll just take a little time.” 

He steers Scott towards Jim’s room where McCoy is still hovering by the bio-bed. “But right now I need you to take care of Len. Get him out of here, feed him, get him drunk and make sure he gets home safely.” Phil puts a hand on Scott’s back and then slips him a loaded hypo in a sealed case. “And take this for the morning. I want him back here and sober by the start of alpha.” 

Scotty takes the offered case and gives Phil a skeptical look. “What about one for me?”

“I don’t think so, I’m trusting you to be the responsible adult tonight.”

“Aye, that’ll be right.” The sarcasm in Scotty’s voice leaves Phil in no doubt about what the slightly obscure phrase means and he shakes his head, patting Scott’s back. 

“Sober, Scott, sober. I’m relying on you to look after him.”

“Aye, right. I think I can manage that.”

****

The voices are rising, unusual in the quiet of these secluded upper floors of Medical’s secured wing, and while Phil recognizes McCoy’s distinctive drawl he can’t hear the other person clearly enough to discern who the man is arguing with. He casts a glance up at Jim’s bio-readouts and, satisfied that nothing has changed in the last few minutes he rises to go investigate. 

As he’s walking towards the door to the anteroom the voices become clearer and he’s not surprised to figure out that McCoy’s antagonist is Spock. Their relationship has been curiously strained over the last couple of days and Phil isn’t quite sure why, given Spock’s role in saving Jim. It’s only as he gets closer that he hears his own name and frowns, pausing just far enough from the door to stop it from opening automatically and revealing his presence. 

“I feel that it is time I informed Doctor Boyce of my transgression.” Spock’s voice is low, uncharacteristically hesitant and, if he didn’t know better, Phil would almost say that he sounded guilt-ridden. 

“Bad idea Spock, really bad idea. You fucked up royally, you’re going to make it ten times worse if you tell him.” McCoy on the other hand is as forceful as ever. 

“My intent was to provide comfort, surely Doctor Boyce will understand that.”

“You know, Spock, there’s an old sayin’ “Intent ain’t magical”. I don’t think Boyce is going to give a flying fuck what your intent was when you tell him that you melded with his husband – without his consent – as he was dying. I think he’s just gonna want to beat you to a pulp.”

And then there’s silence as the door slides open and Phil clears his throat and the two protagonists look up, startled to find him watching them.

“You have something to tell me Mr. Spock?” Even though he’s heard enough to know what McCoy is trying to hide from him – and his mind is already churning through the horrific implications of that information – he wants to give Spock a chance to explain himself. 

The young man hesitates, although he’s brave enough to hold Phil’s gaze, and there’s something in Spock’s dark eyes that makes Phil’s blood run cold. Now he realizes that this is what Jim couldn't tell him on the night of Chris’s death. As upset as Jim had been, Phil had still been aware that there was something more than grief that had motivated Jim’s need to make sure Chris wasn’t alone even in death, as if he was protecting Chris from something until Phil got there. 

“What…did….you…do?” Phil has a tone he uses on doctors who have committed egregious, unforgivable acts of negligence or carelessness and out of the corner of his eye he can see McCoy blanch and take a step towards him as he recognizes the depth of Phil’s anger. 

“When Admiral Pike was dying, I…” Just that Spock is hesitating ratchets up Phil’s anger and anxiety until he can feel his heart thrumming in his chest. 

“You fucking _what_?” And now Phil’s glad that McCoy is hovering so close, because he might just need someone to restrain him when he goes to deck Spock, sure that in his guilt, Spock won’t defend himself. 

“My intention was to help, I am truly sorry, it was a reflex.”

As angry as he is, Phil can hear the remorse in Spock’s tone and he keeps his own level as he seeks clarification. “Let me get this clear – your intent was to help…but clearly what happened was something else.”

“I was unable to provide comfort. I am sorry. I was overwhelmed; I had no idea that humans could form such deep bonds with each other, that there would be such devastating anguish at the breaking of those bonds. As Admiral Pike was dying the fear he experienced was fear of what you would feel at his passing, his pain was for you, his thoughts were of you, his loneliness that you were not with him.”

For a moment Phil is washed with a grief so intense he has to back up so that he can steady himself against the wall. In his darkest moments over the last few terrible weeks he’d comforted himself with the thought that Chris had died at peace, comforted by the presence of someone he knew and trusted. To know that the truth that he’d clung to is a lie; that Chris had died terrified and confused, alone in all the ways that mattered, is more than he can bear. With a shudder he pushes himself away from the wall as his body rebels and, as the bile begins to burn his throat, he bolts for the adjacent bathroom. 

He’s still leaning over the sink, fighting the need to retch again at the taste of bile and bitter coffee on his tongue, when there is a knock on the doorframe and he snaps out, “Give me a fucking minute.”

McCoy’s sigh is distinctive enough that Phil doesn’t have to turn to know who is behind him, and he waves an apology. “Sorry, I’m sorry Len.” He takes a moment to rinse his mouth and run the UV sanitizer on the sink until he’s ready to turn and face McCoy. “I just… I have no fucking idea what Spock was thinking.”

“Yeah, I don’t know either, but I’m pretty damn sure that he really did mean to try to help.” There’s a pause and then McCoy admits, his voice thick with self-reproach. “Spock’s been pretty fucked up since Nero – and god-fucking-forbid he should admit it – but I don’t know enough about Vulcan psych to really be able to help him. I should have been paying more attention to what’s goin’ on in his head.” 

Leaning back on the sink Phil shakes his head, unwilling, for now, to cut Spock that much slack. “Yeah, well ultimately we’re all responsible for our own mental well-being.” He scrubs his hands through his hair, part of him aware that he’s being harsher than he maybe should on Spock. But, even as he tries to rationalize what Spock had done, he keeps coming back to the thought that he should have known better and he finds himself verbalizing all the reasons he’s angry.

“Goddammit, Len. He was with us on Rigel and Talos; he knew how badly the Talosians fucked with Chris’s mind. He came to me after the Narada worried specifically about how Chris’s history with psychological manipulation would compromise his recovery from that fucking slug. How could he, of all people, have thought that this would be okay?” It’s a rhetorical question but Phil isn’t surprised when McCoy chooses to answer it. 

“He’s having a really hard time with loss, Phil; for obvious reasons. I really do think he intended to try to ease Chris’s passing, but he was overwhelmed. Despite his momma, remember, he was raised Vulcan and he’s absorbed a lot of their reflexive notions about what humans are capable of.” McCoy pauses, and Phil watches as the hazel eyes go soft and sad “I bet he didn’t expect to find out how much Chris loved you, and how much that love hurt in those last few moments. Maybe that’s the best that you can take from this, that he couldn’t help because he never imagined that kind of devotion in a human couple.” 

Phil nods as leans against the wall, one hand rubbing at the building headache behind his eyes, worn out and close to weeping now that the anger is fading. “Yeah, I guess.” After a moment, he takes a deep breath, swallowing down the sorrow and then looks up to find McCoy busy fiddling with his PADD.

“Here, I’ve sent you the code to my temp housing. You need to get out of here for a while.” He waves a hand when Phil goes to protest that he’d still got five hours left on his shift. “Saroyan’s going to cover for you. There’s a bottle of Woodford in the kitchen, go break the seal on it.” And then one eyebrow goes up, and Phil knows that look, it’s one he uses himself when he needs to hammer home a point and McCoy growls, “Don’t finish it before I get there.”

****

When he thinks about it later, there’s a part of Phil that wonders if he might have been able to hold himself together if the temp housing for medical wasn’t still in Reid Hall. Renovated twice in the 29 years since he’d last lived there, it still feels like the same building. The apartments still have the same configuration of bathroom/bedroom/living room and kitchen-barely-wide-enough-to swing-a-cat; the same shitty furniture and omnipresent smell of institutional laundry detergent and weary medical staff. But, as he rides the lift to the fourteenth floor all he can remember is the night he brought Chris back here for the first time, so full of life and promise, and the monumental sense of loss rolls over him again. He leans on the wall and closes his eyes, the memories vivid; the feel and smell and taste of that beautiful, brilliant, self-assured young man who had changed his life, as one night had become a weekend, and then a lifetime. 

A lifetime that is now over.

The bottle of bourbon is on the counter, as if McCoy had known that it would be needed tonight, and it takes all Phil’s resolve not to just crack the seal and drink straight from the bottle, to sink the sweet, dark, fire of the bourbon in long pulls until the heat of it dissolves the knot of agony that’s taken up permanent residence around his heart, and grants him the peace of numb oblivion. 

But as he leans on the counter and stares at the bottle, watching the light spark points of gold and bronze that dance in the translucent mahogany of the whiskey, he reminds himself exactly why he’s been staying away from alcohol since the funeral; why he’s confined his self-medication to the sTHC that gives him the dreamless oblivion that he needs almost instantly. Alcohol is much, much more dangerous; Phil is not, and has never been, a happy drunk and if he lets himself succumb to the seduction of the bourbon then it will strip his inhibitions and carry him deep into grief and despair before it releases him into the void. 

And it’s that loss of inhibition that terrifies Phil. There have been moments over the last few weeks when he’s flirted with the idea of following Chris, when he’s allowed himself to think about all the many ways a physician has at his disposal for peacefully, painlessly ending a life. Thought about how easy it would be to administer a fatal dose of any one of the dozen narcotics he’s got in his medical bag, and then lay himself down secure in the knowledge that he’d never again have to wake to a world without Chris. 

Even as busy as he’s been, he’s already begun to feel the aching loneliness that he knows will be his future, utterly sure that he’ll never again love anyone the way he loved Chris. It’s an unbearable prospect, a barren, achingly desolate vision of a life in purgatory, of wandering endlessly across T. S. Eliot’s _“…whole Thibet of broken stones, that lie fang up, a lifetime’s march…”_

And he’s thought, just occasionally, about what it would take to escape that, thought about it, but never acted. Because as tempting as it is, Phil knows it’s wrong, that it would hurt more people than he can bear to think about and ultimately, it would be the last thing Chris would have wanted for him. But the temptation lingers, and all it would take would be enough alcohol to lower his reserve just long enough for him to access the medical bag that is always at hand.

For a moment he leans on the counter, confused about why McCoy, a man with a PhD in psychiatry, would send an obviously grieving and potentially suicidal friend home to a full bottle of bourbon. And then he shakes his head at Len’s cunning – such a clever, clever bastard – and is warmed, just slightly, at the man’s faith in him. In his certainty that no matter how deep Phil’s anguish, no matter how overpowering his need to escape, he wouldn’t inflict the burden of being the one to find his body on Len. 

He lifts the medical bag onto the counter and carefully extracts all the potentially lethal narcotics, along with a couple of fast-acting neuro-toxins used for onsite medically-necessary paralysis, and dumps all of them in the recycler. He’ll have to account for them in the morning, but pharmaceutical oversight is one of the perks of being the Head of Trauma. And then, secure in the knowledge that the worst he can inflict on himself is a nasty case of alcohol poisoning, he takes a glass from the cabinet, loads it with ice and pours himself a healthy shot. He leaves the bottle where it is, if he has to walk back to the kitchen every time he needs a refill, it’ll slow his consumption and stop it entirely once he’s too uncoordinated to walk. 

Phil manages to sink almost half the bottle before he finally succumbs to the inevitable, inescapable, unraveling of his emotions and he lets the pain overwhelm him. He slides down onto the floor, wraps his arms around his knees and weeps until he’s exhausted, only peripherally aware that at some point there is someone else moving around the apartment.

When he’s coherent again, McCoy is sitting on the floor with him, drinking from the bottle, his hand resting consolingly on Phil’s head. 

“You okay?”

Phil pushes himself upright and shakes himself. He can still feel the booze and his head is pounding, but the tight band of pain around his chest has loosened and he can take a deep breath without feeling like he’s going to throw up, which is an improvement. “Yeah, better.” 

He coughs, his voice shredded by the alcohol and the tears and then he takes the bottle, managing a judicious sip before he coughs again and McCoy rubs his back. “I remember the first time I saw you guys together. Damn, surprised the hell out of me.”

For a moment Phil is surprised that McCoy is going down this road, not sure that he can stand to talk about Chris just yet. But when he looks up and sees the gentle, understanding sorrow in Len’s face, he shrugs and swallows hard. “Yeah, yeah…I remember that day.” And then Phil manages a smile, and tilts his head “You disappeared pretty fast when we got affectionate.”

“Yeah, voyeurism’s not exactly my thing, anyway…” He takes the bottle back from Phil, “…thought you might kill me if I kept watching.”

They get through the rest of the bottle between them, slowly, over hours, as Phil talks about all the fear and pain and thrilling joy of their years together in the black and later, of the calmer, sweeter time in San Francisco. 

“I know it’s probably not the time to say this but, you were lucky, you know that, yeah?” McCoy is lying on the floor his head propped up on a cushion pulled off the couch and his voice is lazy and slurred as it breaks the long space of contemplative silence that has fallen over the room. 

Phil is slumped in one of the unbelievably uncomfortable arm chairs, his head resting on the chair back and he opens his eyes to stare at the ceiling for a moment as he tries to frame a response, aware that the unbearable pain of the last few weeks has been replaced by exhaustion and a weary, aching emptiness. He understands what McCoy is getting at and intellectually he knows that he’s right; for almost thirty years Phil has known what it is to love someone unreservedly, and to be loved so in return. Despite their often-contentious temperaments, he and Chris had fit together so well, two parts of an emotional, sexual, spiritual whole and the present agony – the sense that he’s been ripped in two – is so excruciating only because they had loved so deeply. 

He shakes himself slightly and tilts his head to look down at McCoy, who stares back at him, his face solemn and concerned, and then Phil manages a tight, sad smile. “Yeah, I know, and one day I’ll be able to celebrate that, but right now all I can do is grieve for something I’ll never have again.” His voice wavers slightly and he pauses – rubbing his hand hard across his face – before he goes on, resolve in his tone. “But you and Jim, you’ve had a second chance, don’t let go of it, don’t let go of him, ever, you hear me? You two fuck this up and I’ll kick your asses from here to Alpha Centauri and back.”

“Gotcha, boss.” McCoy leans over and pats Phil’s leg. “Might needs some advice now and then, from someone who knows how to keep a smart-ass captain in line.”

And now Phil does manage a real laugh: short and still slightly shaky, but genuine. “I could write you a fucking book, Len; a fucking book.”

**** 

He drops the duffel in the short hallway that leads to the currently open front door, turning for one last look at the apartment that had been his home – their home – for seven years. It’s a little strange with almost all the personal touches removed, the holos and still pictures, the art from the walls and Jericho’s dog bed gone from its space by the hearth. 

With Jericho securely settled at the ranch, and his own possessions on their way to Rome, safe in the hands of Starfleet logistics, the stack of long term storage crates that remains in the entry way attests to a heart wrenching day of painstaking labor as he’d packed all the material evidence of Chris’s life away. The crates will go to the ranch, to be stored until Phil can finally face the – as yet unimaginable – task of deciding how to dispose of everything.

He turns as he hears a footstep in the hallway behind him and finds McCoy standing by the door, scratching the back of his neck and looking just a little diffident.

“Come here, take a look at what I’m leaving for you.” Phil stands aside and McCoy slips past him into the living room. “If there’s anything you don’t want, or need, let Alice know, she’ll arrange to have it stored at the ranch.”

“You kidding? This is amazing. I’m never going to be able to get Jim out of this chair.” 

Phil smiles as McCoy stands by Chris’s old reading chair and runs his hands over the books in the floor-to-ceiling shelves by the living room window.

“Yeah, well the kid has a long convalescence in front of him – time in this chair with good books is just what he needs.” His voice trails away as he remembers all the hours Chris had spent doing just that, in those long months of recovery after the Narada. And then he looks up and McCoy is watching him, acknowledging the memories with a slow slightly melancholy tilt of his head. “Can’t thank you enough for this, Phil. We’ll take care of the place for you, until you’re ready to come back.”

“Yeah, it’s going to be a few years.” Determined not to dwell on all that he’s leaving behind Phil shakes himself and kicks lightly at the storage crates. “These will be moved to the ranch tomorrow, so you guys can move in any time you like. I’m going to see Josh and Alice for a couple of days before I leave.”

“Can’t believe you’re packed and ready to go already.” McCoy walks back towards the entry way, running his hand over the back of the couch. 

Phil shrugs; he’d jumped at the chance to get out of San Francisco when the Surgeon General had told him that the job of Starfleet liaison to the Federation Emergency Relief Organization had come open. Based in Rome he’ll spend his time coordinating the medical logistics for disaster relief throughout the Federation; he’ll be busy and useful, and will spend most of his time in the black; which is all he can ask of life right now. “The FERO position has been open for a couple of months, they need someone in there ASAP and anyway…” He takes a deep breath and looks around the room one last time. 

“…there’s nothing for me here anymore.”

_fin_


End file.
